https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-31/monat-mlm-network-marketing-women-mums/106870398
'Monat' is the corporate front for a blame-the-victim 'Amway' copycat cultic racket.
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The Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie.
(Once an absurd American swindle: now a dangerous global delusion)
Introduction
Apart from its use in the sense of ‘a popular fashion
especially followed by a specific section of society’ or ‘a person or thing
popularised in this way,’ the traditional definition of the English noun, cult
(Latin cultus worship), has been ‘a system of religious
worship (Latin religiosus obligation, bondage) especially as
expressed in ritual,’ or ‘devotion or homage to a person or thing.’ However,
the word has come to be used as shorthand for what can be more-accurately
described as a ‘pernicious cult;’ although some commentators prefer the term,
‘destructive cult.’ This phenomenon can be briefly described as - any
non-rational ritual belief system established or perverted for the hidden
criminal purpose of human exploitation. For although cults are presented
externally as traditional associations, arbitrarily defined by their
instigators as almost any banal group (‘religious’,
‘cultural’, ‘political’, ‘commercial’, etc.), behind their
reality-controlling cover stories, internally, cults are always totalitarian. In
other words, they are centrally controlled and require of their core-adherents
an absolute subservience to the group and its patriarchal, and/ or matriarchal,
leadership above all other persons. Since, by their very nature, cults never
present themselves in their true colours, no one ever becomes involved with one
as a result of his/her fully informed consent.
Over the years, the word, ‘cult,’ has been thrown around
so often that most of us now take it for granted that we must know
exactly what it means. To be honest, very few people have sought out
sufficient background material to be able to form a lucid picture of cultism.
Even apparently diligent commentators have tended to examine individual cultic
groups in close-up, leaving the wider phenomenon either out of shot or out of
focus. However, in recent years, it has become a matter of public record that, because
of unprotected exposure to one of an ever-growing, and evolving, catalogue of
apparently diverse groups, almost anyone can begin to exhibit
remarkably uniform symptoms. In everyday terms, it is as though they’ve fallen
head over heels in love. Although this initial euphoria is often short-lived, a
significant minority will subsequently undergo a nightmarish, sudden radical
personality transformation and recklessly dissipate all their mental, and/or
physical, and/or financial, resources to the benefit of some hitherto unknown
person(s), whom they continue to trust and follow no matter what suffering this
entails. In several notorious cases, when enough victims of one of these
latter-day ‘Pied-Pipers’ have wound up on mortuary slabs, the
word, ‘cult,’ been liberally applied by the popular press. It has then
invariably been revealed that there had been some timely attempt(s) to warn the
authorities, but they couldn’t intervene, because, legalistically, cultism does
not exist. That said, all cosmopolitan people readily accept that cults
most-certainly do exist, but, due to the prevalent style of media coverage, we have
habitually thought of them only as remote, and grotesque, freak-shows.
Consequently, if it is suggested that ‘we should all be on our guard against
cultism, because it is actually much closer to us than we like to think,’ the
average person is immediately convinced that such an idea is absurd.
This instinctual reaction is usually accompanied by one,
or more, of the following comments:
· ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t born yesterday, a cult
couldn’t fool me or anyone in my family… only idiots and weaklings join cults.’
· ‘In a free society everyone has the right to
believe in what they want… if adults decide to hand over their time and money
to some charismatic guru, it’s their own business.’
· ‘One man’s cult is another man’s religion.’
· ‘I suppose you’re including all the people who
believe Elvis is still alive.’
· ‘Unless they are being physically held as
prisoners, adults always have a free choice to walk away if they don’t like what’s
happening to them.’
· ‘Perhaps some cult members get harmed, but
that’s their problem not mine.’
· ‘Cults have been around for centuries; there’s
nothing new to learn about them.’ etc.
Whilst these opinions can all seem valid to the
ill-informed, the underlying facts prove them to be nothing more than
ego-protecting self-deceptions which completely miss the point. For it’s easy
to understand that ‘knowledge itself is power,’ but it’s altogether harder to
accept that (by the same token) ignorance is vulnerability. Obviously, cults
never announce themselves, but their many disguises continue to adapt to mirror
the changing spirit of the times. Throughout the ages, a dangerous minority of predatory,
mythomaniacs, charlatans and would-be demagogues have always been able to get
their human quarry to sail blindly into positions of subjection, by first
bedazzling them with all manner of false beacons which seemed so welcoming and authentic that
the majority of people could not have been expected to determine exactly what
was lurking behind them. Yet even though most of us want to deny it, at a time
of vulnerability all of us can need to listen to the latest cultic voice of
insanity; especially when it appeals to our existing beliefs and instinctual
desires and originates from the apparent face of reason. To
casual observers, the phenomenon might seem to be a ridiculous anachronism, but
cultism has survived the tide of history and continues to wreck countless
lives, simply because its instigators keep updating the lyrics of their siren
song. Cultism itself is enduring: its camouflage is ephemeral.
Young children’s unconscious acceptance of ‘Santa Claus’
as reality, stems from a fictitious scenario reflected as fact by
the traditional culture in which they live. Up to a certain age, children are
not equipped to challenge the model of reality offered to them by authority
figures within their family groups; particularly, their parents. Therefore,
once children have been converted to a self-gratifying belief in ‘Santa,’ the
truth (that they are being deceived by the people whom they instinctively love,
trust and depend on) is unthinkable. The scenario can then be expanded
to modify children’s behavior. ‘Santa’ has magical powers… He can see
and hear everything children do at all times… He will reward children for
unquestioning belief and obedience, but punish them for dissent and
disobedience. Only when they attain the necessary level of
intellectual/psychological development, can children begin to use their
critical and evaluative faculties and come to realise that ‘Santa’ is
merely a game of make believe. If you think about it, this is the
most elementary form of non-rational, ritual belief system -
perfectly tailored to fit infantile minds, and reliant on the maintenance of an
absolute monopoly of information presented using a constant repetition of
reality-controlling words and images, combined with pseudo-scientific
mystification and closed-logic.
When analysed with the same level of intellectual rigour,
many of the basic procedures and conditions required to establish cultic groups
turn out not to be a mystery at all. They are revealed as only
more-sophisticated versions of those which also propagate the benign ‘Santa’ deception.
As such, they are frighteningly easy to replicate. However, the
instigators of cults are anything but benign and, interestingly, many of their
most-deluded adherents and convincing apologists turn out to be
well-educated adults who have simply become incapable of facing the
ego-destroying reality that they’ve been fooled by what is merely a game of
make believe. No sane person would ever suggest trying to ban ‘Santa,’ and
everyone lies to their children at some time to modify their behaviour,
but consider the variety of destructive behaviour that an authoritarian adult
(with hidden criminal objectives) could get dependent children to follow by
exploiting their unconscious acceptance of the same imaginary, but nonetheless
emotionally and intellectually overwhelming, narrative as reality. The
unpalatable truth is that, just by perverting the closed-logic rules of the
game, anything - from theft by proxy to sexual, and/or violent,
abuse - becomes possible.
Bearing the above in mind, in January 2006, a UK government
regulatory agency, the ‘Company Investigation Branch’ of the ‘Dept. of Trade
and Industry,’ launched what was described as, ‘a major law enforcement action’
against ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ However, this privately owned British company, first
registered as long ago as 1973, was just one of multiple, expendable ‘affiliates’
of an American-based, privately owned, multinational, parent corporation. The
UK regulators were, in fact, about to challenge (albeit indirectly) the
legality, and indeed the very nature, of a colossal corporate edifice of mind-numbing
structural complexity. The architects, and self-appointed rulers, of which have
comprised the members of two families, DeVos and Van Andel. Indeed, the UK
regulators had been made aware that this pair of Dutch Protestant American
dynasties have counted their wealth in billions of $, enabling them to buy the
protection of not only an army of attorneys and accountants, but also that of
the highest ranks of the US political establishment. Furthermore, before any investigation
began, the regulators had also been explicitly warned that behind its ‘commercial’
camouflage, internally, the pernicious cultic organization they would be
challenging was neither original nor unique, so therefore, it could not be fully
understood in isolation. The foundations of all this were first laid in the USA
back in the 1950s when it was known as, the ‘Ja-Ri Corporation.’ By the 1960s
it had become the ‘American Way Association’ then the ‘Amway
Corporation,’ and since 1999 also known as, ‘Alticor,’ but it has
usually been referred to just as, ‘Amway.’
In April 2007, after fifteen months of investigations, John
Hutton, the Business Secretary (trade minister) in the Labour government of Gordon
Brown (Tony Blair’s successor), filed a ‘public interest bankruptcy petition’
in the UK High Court, seeking the compulsory ‘winding up’ (closure) of ‘Amway
UK Ltd.’ In brief, the company stood accused of contravening the ‘UK Fair
Trading Act 1973’ and the ‘UK Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976,’ by running
what was described as, ‘an inherently objectionable dream-selling scheme, targeting
vulnerable, gullible and deluded persons.’ However, this was far from being a full
and accurate explanation of the abusive criminal racket that the regulators had
now discovered. Yet, for more than thirty years, an incredible mass-deception had
been allowed to hide in plain sight whilst every UK law enforcement agency
(civil and criminal) had ignored it.
At this pre-trial stage, two more, privately owned
British companies, ‘Britt World Wide UK Ltd.’ and ‘Network TwentyOne
UK Ltd.,’ ostensibly run by persons styled as, ‘Amway Diamond
Distributors,’ were included on the same bankruptcy petition accused of being
an integral part of the same offences. Again, these were subsidiaries of
wealthy, American-based, family owned, multinational parent corporations. Yet soon
afterwards, these two companies were quietly removed from the petition when, as
a result of some behind-the-scenes negotiations with the regulators, ‘Britt
World Wide UK’ ceased ‘trading,’ and the legal representatives of ‘Network
TwentyOne UK’ apparently agreed that their corporate client would follow
suit, should the petition against ‘Amway UK’ be granted. Another British
company, ‘International Business Systems UK Ltd.’ (again, ostensibly run
by persons styled as, ‘Amway Diamond Distributors,’ and a subsidiary of
a wealthy, American-based, family owned, multinational parent corporation), had
also been a prime target for investigation, but since this corporate structure had
quickly ceased ‘trading,’ it never even made it onto the petition.
Eight months later, the UK government’s isolated civil
prosecution of ‘Amway UK’ came to court in a hearing which the
regulators insisted ‘would not be open to the public.’ These
proceedings took place over eight days at the end of November and beginning of
December 2007. The government was represented by barristers, Mark Cunningham QC
(Queen’s Counsel) and Andrew Westwood, instructed by the Treasury Solicitor. ‘Amway
UK’ was represented by David Chivers QC and Philip Gillyon instructed by
Eversheds LLP. Sadly, although some of the shocking superficial facts of the
government’s case were reported by certain media outlets, including ‘The
Times,’ no journalist bothered to dig deeper into what was far from being an ordinary
story. For it never came out in court that America’s celebrated leading authority
on racketeering, professor of law George Robert Blakey (who was still alive in
2007), had previously drafted a report in which he identified ‘Amway’s’ so-called
‘business’ as, being ‘run in a manner that is parallel to that of major organized
crime groups, in particular the Mafia.’ Whilst the UK regulators (who
had been supplied with a copy of Prof. Blakey’s expert opinion, along with his
contact details) acknowledged the prosecution to be the result of ‘the largest
ever investigation of a British company.’ Indeed, several truckloads of documentary
evidence had been seized at ‘Amway UK’s’ head office in the Buckinghamshire
city of Milton Keynes by a team of specialist ‘Company Investigation Branch’
agents led by Peter Bott. However, after looking beyond a wall of mind-numbing
mathematical, and linguistic, hocus-pocus, Bott and his colleagues had initially
been faced with an enigma.
During the thirty+ years of ‘Amway UK’s’ existence,
the company’s independent auditors had never once signed off on an annual net trading
profit. In fact, in just the period 2000-2006, ‘Amway UK’ had officially
chalked up accumulated net trading losses of approximately fifteen million £. Although
this disastrous British company had always been haemorrhaging financially, for some
obscure reason, its billionaire American bosses had been keeping it alive with regular
cash transfusions declared in its accounts as, deriving from ‘Amway’ subsidiaries
in Europe and Asia. In fact, a lot more external funding was now urgently required
just to cover ‘Amway UK’s’ mounting legal costs. Obviously, where all
this miraculous money originated could not be verified, because the UK
regulators did not have access to the independently audited, financial records of
foreign registered companies. Yet for decades, ‘Amway UK’s’ corporate
officers had been allowed to use this opaque, endless supply of cash to maintain
the illusion that they were running ‘Britain’s most successful direct
selling company, offering ordinary people an entirely legal, government
approved, Multi-Level Marketing income/business opportunity.’ However, completely
contrary to its nonspecific, jargon-laced commercial cover-story, prior
to 2006, there had never been the slightest official attempt to determine what was
the real function of this apparently pointless corporate structure. For whilst
‘Amway UK’s’ own exciting comic-book narrative had eventually boasted of
fifty+ million £ of ‘annual sales of products and services,’ via an expanding ‘salesforce’
rapidly approaching one hundred thousand persons in the UK and Ireland, the
regulators had now discovered that, in the adult world of quantifiable reality,
at any given moment during 2005 and 2006, ‘Amway UK’ had counted less
than forty thousand so-called ‘distributorships’ registered on its books,
whilst the company had been declaring ‘annual (net-loss) sales’ of
around ten million £.
Meanwhile, behind all these distracting, and ultimately
meaningless, labels and figures, ‘Amway’s’ unremarkable products were, contrary
to all commercial logic, found to have been priced at a level which made them
effectively unsaleable on the open market. Whilst the average churn rate for
participants in ‘Amway’s’ commercially unviable scheme, had always exceeded
50% per year. Consequently, it was possible to extrapolate from the available
data that (since many of these temporary so-called ‘distributorships’
were formed by couples) around one million recruits had, in fact, gradually passed
through ‘Amway UK’s’ lowest ranks 1973-2006. Indeed, without their
fully-informed consent, all these people had signed take-it-or-leave-it contracts
which had also falsely labelled them as ‘Independent Business Owners (IBOs);’
thereby obliging them not only to accept responsibility for their considerable
start up and operating costs, but also, on pain of unilateral termination of
their contracts, to obey an additional thick book of ‘rules’ and abide
by ‘Amway’s’ own internal system of dispute resolution. Yet, for
obvious reasons, after the deduction of all their inevitable costs, not one of this
endlessly expanding flock of would-be entrepreneurs had managed to
generate so much as a penny of overall net-income lawfully by regularly
retailing fixed-priced ‘Amway’-supplied merchandise for a profit to
persons who were not fellow so-called ‘Amway Independent Business Owners.’
Thus, since there had never been a significant and sustainable source of
revenue other than that deriving internally from the purchases of ‘Amway
UK’s’ own contractually bound so-called ‘salesforce,’ the hidden overall
net-loss churn rate for unwitting investors in this dissimulated rigged-market,
had been effectively 100%. However, the fact that ‘Amway’s’ scheme was,
by design, financially suicidal, but few people had come forward to complain
about it, indicated that something extremely sinister must have been occurring here.
Although it was never reported, the decision to prosecute
‘Amway UK’ had, in fact, been made, when, after receiving guidance, UK regulators
had finally woken up and deduced that the hidden function of this mysterious, chronically
insolvent British company, had been to act as bait in a heavily disguised human
trap. Yet, whilst the UK national media had failed to identify it and, and by
doing nothing to stop it, the authorities had effectively authorized it,
year upon year, this insidious, foreign-controlled mechanism had been permitted
to pump out a steady stream of bedazzling (‘anyone can start his/her own independent
business and achieve financial freedom’) propaganda and, thus, keep luring
and exploiting an endless chain of fresh UK and Irish recruits. However, although
the overwhelming majority of ‘Amway’s’ unwitting human quarry had
remained for less than a couple of years and wasted no more than a few thousand
£, a significant minority (around 5%) with access to enough independent funds,
and/or credit, had been able to remain in the trap for extended periods, recklessly
wasting tens of thousands of £ and isolating themselves from anyone trying to
reason with them. For even though they had no chance of establishing a viable
business, just like chronic gambling addicts, chronic losers in ‘Amway’s’ rigged,
pay-to-play game of commercial make-believe were totally convinced that they
would ‘soon become winners,’ because they had ‘discovered a sure-fire way to
make all your dreams come true.’
Despite the somewhat obvious reality that ‘Amway’s’
so-called ‘income/business opportunity,’ had always been a pernicious
fake (designed not only to relieve its victims of their time and money, but
also to coerce the most vulnerable of them into becoming chronically deluded de
facto slave recruiters), in the spring of 2008, it was reported in ‘The
Times’ that 'Amway UK' had been ‘cleared at the High Court of dream
selling, of operating an unlawful lottery and of being an unlawful trading
scheme.' This, however, did not even come close to being an accurate
summary of what was contained in the lengthy, ambiguous and impossibly naïve ruling
handed down by one High Court Judge, Mr. Alastair Justice Norris, and which was
subsequently upheld by two out of three Appeal Court Judges. For although Judge
Norris initially seemed to be acting in the interest of the public, by applying
common-sense and accepting that the government’s case against ‘Amway UK’
had been brought on valid grounds, he then got lost in the mind-numbing labyrinth
of legally ‘independent’ companies and mathematical, and linguistic, hocus-pocus,
and somehow managed to conclude that, 'on balance,’ the public interest
bankruptcy petition could be declined, and no other penalty imposed.
Regrettably, in his ruling the judge also completely failed
to spot the far-reaching implications contained in some truly jaw-dropping evidence
provided by Richard Berry, the senior corporate officer of another legally ‘independent,’
privately-owned company, the so-called ‘UK Direct Selling Association,’
of which ‘Amway UK’ had, in fact, been the leading member and significant
source of funding. For Berry confessed to the court, albeit in the form of a foolish
boast, that 'Amway operated its Multi-Level Marketing scheme in
eighty other countries around the world,’ and that, ‘for two decades,
the overwhelming majority of direct selling companies operating in the UK had
also been running Multi-Level Marketing schemes.’ Furthermore, at this
moment time, the ‘Amway Corporation’ claimed three million ‘distributors’
worldwide. Whilst the so-called ‘UKDSA’ claimed four hundred
thousand+ UK and Irish ‘distributors’ under contract to its (mainly
‘MLM’) member companies. However, in order to maintain the illusion
of legitimacy and sustainability, the overall, effectively 100%,
net-loss churn rate for ‘MLM’ participation, did not feature in either
of these essentially identical, nonspecific comic-book narratives.
Yet although it was staring him in the face, the truth
that ‘Amway’ is by no means unique, and that (just as Prof. Blakey had
once attempted to explain) ‘Amway’s’ entire multinational operation has
always been a textbook example of a Mafia-style criminal racket - a
mass-deception disguised as a ‘legitimate commercial activity’ and organized
behind a vast, and deliberately confusing, protective front of legally ‘independent,’
but in fact interdependent, centrally controlled, corporate structures, maliciously
designed to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and insulate its billionaire crime-family
bosses from liability, was evidently unthinkable to Judge Norris. Consequently,
his dubious decision to reject the UK government’s public interest bankruptcy
petition, rested on his first swallowing the highly improbable story that, although
‘Amway UK’s’ unlawful ‘business model’ had ‘remained more or less unaltered for
more than thirty years,’ in order to comply with UK trading scheme and
lotteries legislation, ‘Amway UK’s’ current legal representatives and senior company
officers had now (only when finally faced with civil investigation and
prosecution) given solemn ‘undertakings’ to the High Court that the previous 'business
model' had been ‘voluntarily’ paused and then ‘significantly revised in October
2007,’ and that certain of the company's ‘network leaders’
contracts’ had been terminated, because they’d ‘broken Amway’s own rules.’
Thus, Judge Norris’ ruling (in which he actually compared
‘Amway’s’ so-called ‘network leaders’ to ‘gang masters,’ and even
observed that due to price-fixing and a reliance on recruitment, ‘Multi-Level
Marketing schemes risk being exploited as pyramid schemes’) was ultimately based,
not on the abundance of quantifiable evidence proving that, by design, it had always
been impossible to generate an overall net-income lawfully in ‘Amway UK’s’
financially suicidal scheme, but on the false-assumption that ‘Multi-Level
Marketing schemes’ are a legitimate form of commercial enterprise. This fundamental
gaffe then enabled Judge Norris to swallow the resulting demonstrable falsehood
that it was just a few British ‘Amway Diamond Distributors’ whose own
‘legally independent companies, like Britt World Wide UK and Network TwentyOne
UK,’ had been largely responsible for making ‘unobtainable earnings claims’ and
running the ‘inherently objectionable dream selling scheme,’ and that
these were ‘unauthorized activities’ that ‘Amway UK’s’ company officers had claimed
to be opposed to, albeit unaware of, but had now (with the guidance of
the regulators) identified and taken steps to prohibit.
However, even the wide-eyed Judge Norris felt obliged to place
on record his own doubts that ‘Amway UK’s’ latest modified version of
its commercial cover-story was entirely true. Nonetheless, his complete lack
of curiosity as to how much money had been stolen by fraud during all these
years of ‘unauthorized activities,’ and who in the USA had ultimately controlled
the British portion of ‘Amway’s’ colossal multinational labyrinth of legally
‘independent,’ but in fact interdependent front companies, and received the
lion’s share of the mountain of cash thieved and laundered by this highly
organized Mafia-style mechanism, has never been explained. For Judge
Norris did not call for Jerry and Mandy Scriven and Pat and Greta Gregory (the ‘leaders’
of the British subsection of the gigantic, worldwide so-called ‘Amway Network’
known as ‘International Business Systems’), to be investigated and held
to account for the catalogue of abusive crimes which, in his own ruling, he indirectly
acknowledged that they and a handful of other British ‘Amway gang
masters’ had been committing. Yet for many years, these smiling charlatan-couples
had starred in ‘Amway UK’s’ reality-controlling propaganda and had been worshipped
by the bedazzled ‘Amway’ faithful, as prosperous ‘Diamond Distributors’
and ‘Top Earners’ who had ‘discovered the secrets of how to achieve success.’ Furthermore,
the Scrivens and the Gregorys had also been portrayed by ‘Amway UK’ as selfless
‘positive thinking’ role models prepared to share their life-transforming secret
knowledge with others, in the form of ‘a proven two-to-five-year plan to
achieve total financial freedom.’ However, in 2006, they had suddenly been air-brushed
out the company’s comic-book narrative, after being sacked from their so-called
‘Independent Businesses’ and made convenient scapegoats. Indeed, as far
as I’m aware, not one excommunicated ‘Amway UK’ scapegoat was ever interviewed
by UK law enforcement agents, or tax compliance officials, demanding to know
where the bulk of the money they had stolen had gone, and how much they had
kept themselves.
Subsequently, knowing that they risked nothing from the
authorities, the Scrivens and the Gregorys spent years on the Net screaming
their innocence and declaring that, far from being ‘unauthorized,’
the activities for which they had been kicked out of ‘Amway,’ had always
been pursued with the full knowledge, and enthusiastic participation, of 'Amway
UK's' company officers. Yet, mysteriously, neither the Scrivens nor the Gregorys
were called as witnesses to perjury during the High Court proceedings, whilst the
dispute resolution clause attached to their so-called ‘distributor’
contracts prevented them from going to law. However, again for reasons that
were never explained, the regulators apparently did not bother to tell Judge
Norris that they already knew damn-well where most of the stolen cash had gone
and even approximately how much it totalled - hundreds of millions of £. They
also knew that there was plenty of documentary evidence, as well as other far
more reliable witnesses, proving that ‘Amway UKs’ company officers had simply
pretended affinity with the regulators and recited established passages from
their billionaire bosses’ play book. Again, mysteriously, this evidence was not
produced, and the witnesses were never called to testify.
The reason why I know all this, is because I am someone who,
in 1997, was even threatened in writing with a nonspecific lawsuit by ‘Amway
UK’s’ legal representatives, for speaking out about the very same abusive criminal
activities that ‘Amway UK’s’ senior company officers were allowed to deny
all previous knowledge of and pretend to be opposed to themselves.
Furthermore, this was by no means the only attempt to silence me and hide the
truth. For I am also the person whose persistent complaint (and guidance)
finally triggered the civil prosecution of ‘Amway UK’ in the first place.
However, I had called for a rigorous criminal inquiry into the wider ‘MLM’
cult phenomenon in the UK, hopefully leading to the protection of the public
and the re-establishment of the rule of law, but the most-senior regulator
involved, the UK’s ‘Deputy Inspector of Companies,’ Cliff Callaghan, had
personally assured me that this would take years and cost many millions of £,
and could, therefore, only happen after the compulsory closure of ‘Amway UK
Ltd.’ using relatively inexpensive, standard civil bankruptcy procedures. Tellingly,
he made sure never to put any of this in writing.
In this way, not only was the luring and exploitation of literally
hundreds of thousands of unwitting UK and Irish victims over a period spanning several
decades, resulting in the theft by deception and laundering of hundreds of
millions of £, by the billionaire bosses of the ‘Amway’ cultic
racket quietly brushed under the carpet, but also, following this isolated and
ill-conceived civil prosecution, the wealthy bosses of various, mainly American
controlled, ‘Amway’ copycat, blame-the-victim ‘MLM’ cultic rackets
were, by default, given the green light to keep their own corporate Trojan
Horses registered in Britain and continue hiding their real criminal function. For
today, no UK or Irish law enforcement agency (civil or criminal) is trying to
stop them, but then it would be highly embarrassing for the authorities to
admit to their gross negligence, and share of responsibility, in enabling this shameful
situation to develop and persist. Additionally, some of the unwitting individuals
to have proved the most susceptible to recruitment into deluded de facto ‘MLM’
slavery have been disgruntled police officers.
So, how can a pile of money be made from a financially
suicidal ‘business model’ that has been deliberately rigged to fail?
In 1967, an American satirical movie offered a memorable
answer to this conundrum. I am of course referring to ‘The Producers,’
written and directed by Mel Brooks. Whilst this movie went over the heads of
certain humourless critics who described it as ‘controversial,’ in 1968 it won
its author an Academy Award for best original screenplay. Indeed by 1996, ‘The
Producers’ had long-since achieved a ‘cult’ status and was deemed to be of such
‘cultural, historic and aesthetic significance,’ that it was selected by the
Library of Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry.
For Mel Brooks’ had presented the world with a classic comedy double act - Max
Bialystock, an outrageous caricature of a once successful, but now failing, New
York Jewish theatrical producer (evidently suffering from Narcissistic
Personality Disorder) played by Zero Mostel, and Leo Bloom, a deeply insecure
Jewish accountant (evidently suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder) played by
Gene Wilder. In the movie, this pair of physically and psychologically opposite
characters come together and perpetrate an absurd swindle - identified by the
accountant and peddled by the producer. By first building a bedazzling fantasy
of boundless future prosperity, happiness and freedom in his
mind, Bialystock overwhelms an initially reluctant Bloom, and persuades him to
become his partner in crime. He then sets to work seducing a flock of wealthy,
but lonely and vulnerable, old ladies. One by one, Bialystock persuades them to
buy a staggering total of ‘25 000% of the projected profits’ from, what
he assures them will be, ‘a sure-fire hit stage musical’ which he and
Bloom are producing on Broadway. However, he doesn’t tell them that the show has
been written by a deranged devotee of Adolf Hitler, Franz Liebkind, or that it will
venerate the ‘führer’ and the ‘Nazis.’ For the show,
‘Springtime for Hitler,’ has been carefully selected by its producers with
the hidden criminal motive of offending a sophisticated New York theatre audience
to such an extent, that it will be doomed to close after only one disastrous
performance. Just to make certain that it will immediately bomb, Bialystock and
Bloom recruit an aggressively kitsch transvestite, Roger DeBris, to direct the show,
and they find a drug-fuelled pacifist-hippie, Lorenzo Saint DuBois (LSD), to play Hitler. On opening
night, Bialystock even makes an enemy of the New York Times theatre critic, by
offering him a bribe.
The devious plan being that, seeing as ‘Springtime for
Hitler’ has cost Bialystock and Bloom only a mere fraction of their available
financing to stage, when inevitably it sinks without a trace, the Internal Revenue
Service will have no reason to investigate Bloom’s fraudulent declaration that ‘no
profit was made.’ Moreover, the old ladies who collectively have vastly
over-financed the show, will believe that they simply made a bad investment.
As ill-informed and isolated individuals, they too will have no reason to
suspect fraud. Thus, Bialystock and Bloom will be able quietly to keep
the large pile of excess finance. However, when despite all their sabotage efforts,
‘Springtime for Hitler’ turns out to be a smash hit predicted to ‘run
and run,’ the producers, along with the show’s author, wind up behind bars. Ultimately,
they are seen duplicating the same fraud on their fellow inmates and the prison
warden, with Bialystock and Liebkind directing rehearsals and Bloom
over-selling ‘shares’ in their latest ‘sure-fire hit production,
Prisoners of Love.’
Now most people would automatically assume that, in the
real world, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to perpetrate essentially the same absurd,
blame-the-victim swindle, albeit hidden behind a far more confusing, and
ultimately incomprehensible, ‘sure fire business model,’ but again one
controlled by devious con artists who have deliberately designed it to fail. A swindle
not just based on the same, one-off, financially suicidal modus operandi as
described above, but now expanded and duplicated on an industrial scale and
baited to keep ensnaring a much wider range of unwitting victims. Indeed, to
the average person, the idea that numerous gangs of copycat charlatans have
been allowed to keep peddling the same rigged game of commercial make-believe
as reality, steadily luring, exploiting, isolating and silencing many
millions of losing investors around the world over a period spanning several
decades, and thereby get away with stealing a veritable mountain of money, would
seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility. However, it should be remembered
that ‘the best way of hiding something, is to place it in plain sight and make
as big as you possibly can.’
Thus,
I managed to live more than three decades without ever hearing the made-up technical-sounding
phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing,’ or its catchy abbreviation, ‘MLM.’
Today, I wish this contagious nonsense had never entered my life, but unfortunately,
I had no choice in the matter. Whilst reading the history of my own nightmare encounter
with the original 'MLM commercial' cult known as 'Amway' (corruption
of 'The American Way'), bear in mind that, when these disturbing events first started
to unfold, I had no idea of the extraordinary level of danger my family was in,
or of the true nature, extent and power of the phenomenon I was confronted
with. As yet, there was no plain language, comprehensive explanation of 'MLM
commercial' cultism readily available. That’s why I began the thankless
task of formulating one as long ago the late 1990s. However, at that time, I
was still trying to find the right words to identify it accurately. Even when I
did find the right words, I discovered that the ugly, but ultimately absurd,
truth about the 'MLM commercial' cult phenomenon was still totally unthinkable
to most people. The truth being, that what has become commonly referred to as, 'the
MLM business model,’ has been nothing more than a classic example of the
notorious, reality-controlling, authoritarian/totalitarian propaganda tactic
known as the 'Big Lie.' That is to say, ‘the spreading of a falsehood which is
so colossal and outrageous that the average person cannot even begin to
conceive that anyone would have the audacity to invent it.’ Indeed, when I
first began to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie, I was faced with the
daunting situation where it had been repeated, largely unchallenged, so often
and for so many years, that a remarkable number of apparently sophisticated and
rational people have accepted it as the truth. Thus, rendering
them incapable of admitting to their embarrassing gaffe - Mr. Alastair Justice Norris, being a classic
example. For unfortunately, it is human nature for us to try to justify our
previous behaviour, no matter how foolish that might have been.
The situation is still daunting, but lately it has begun
to change in that, mainly due to the Internet, an increasing number of
courageous 'MLM commercial' cult survivors have found accurate information,
as well as mutual support, enabling them to come forward and describe their
essentially identical, nightmare experiences. Also, whereas in the past many of
the most-fanatical 'MLM' converts were men, who naturally found it hard
to admit to the world that they'd been duped, lately the majority of persons
being lured into, and exploited by, these pernicious groups, have been women.
Furthermore, in 2019, my American associate, Robert FitzPatrick, published
'Ponzinomics.' In this book, Robert not only goes a long way towards
identifying the true criminogenic nature of the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon, but he also traces the origins and evolution of the Big 'MLM' Lie
and explains how, almost by chance, a pair of its earliest creators managed to
obtain the highest-level of protection in the USA. As a result, politically
appointed senior Federal Trade Commission officials effectively raised the
white flag of surrender to predatory criminals, albeit dressed up as respectable
Christian businessmen, when, starting in the 1970s and despite rising
levels of complaint across the USA, they set aside an established, common-sense
legal precedent which had automatically identified and banned all commercially
unviable, endless-chain (infinite level) recruitment frauds, previously labelled
as, 'pyramid selling schemes.' For, even though it had been under investigation
for years and was facing civil prosecution, these senior FTC officials eventually
latched onto a convenient, and convoluted, pretext not to go ahead and shut-down
the corporate-front for the original 'MLM commercial' cult, upon which
all subsequent versions have been, and continue to be, modelled. This dubious
decision was evidently made because the bosses of the 'Amway Corporation,' Messrs.
Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos, with a Bible in one hand and the Stars and
Stripes in the other, had not only developed the devious tactic of pretending affinity
with the regulators, but they’d also purchased association with their local
congressman (fifth Michigan district) with significant quantities of stolen
money. The beneficiary of these ill-gotten gains was none other than Gerald
Rudolph Ford Jnr. - a politician not exactly noted for his intellectual
capacity, but nonetheless someone of great influence.
For those readers who are perhaps too young to remember
him, Gerald Ford was leader of the Republican party in the House of
Representatives 1965-1973, becoming US vice-president under Richard Nixon when,
in 1973, Spiro Agnew (who was under investigation for corruption), pled guilty to
a minor felony charge and was obliged to resign. Ford went on to become US
president 1974-1976 after Nixon himself was obliged to resign rather than face
certain impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Thus, Ford remains the only
person to have held both the office of US vice-president and US president,
without being elected to either. He is also the president who granted a pardon
to Nixon for the crimes he'd committed whilst in office.
However, the co-opting of Gerald Ford to be the first high
ranking US politician to act the role of ‘Amway’s’ useful idiot, was
only one step in DeVos and Van Andel’s well-financed infiltration, and
subversion, of the US legislative process and justice system. Indeed, there can
be absolutely no doubt that, culminating in 1979, the chiefs of an important
civil regulatory agency of the US federal government played politics, and in so
doing, completely failed in their appointed task of protecting the American
public. As a direct consequence, the FTC brought about the birth of the essentially
meaningless phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing is legal.' In this way, a ridiculous,
but nonetheless insidious, endless-chain (infinite level) recruitment fraud was
effectively authorized in the USA by an unaccountable little clique of self-serving
bureaucrats. Furthermore, this major American regulatory lapse permitted the
profitable racket of 'MLM commercial' cultism not only to be extensively
reproduced in the USA, but also to be exported around the world, now hidden
behind the pretence that ‘the MLM business model (as developed by the
founders of the Amway Corporation)’ had been ‘examined, regulated and approved
by the US government… So, anyone calling it a fraud must be a deranged, hate-filled
anti-capitalist or crazy conspiracy theorist.'
Not surprisingly, subsequent generations of politically
appointed senior FTC officials have all refused to admit publicly to their
predecessors' catastrophic failure and their own gross (and in some cases
criminal) negligence; for which, one day, a sitting American government might
find itself liable. In this way, the Big ‘MLM’ Lie was permitted to
transform and expand into a well-oiled machine for stealing and laundering
money on a global scale; each year bringing billions of dollars into the USA,
and all right under the noses of complacent officials who have continued to
allow much of this plunder to be falsely declared, with the paid-compliance of
some of the world's largest accountancy firms, as 'retail sales revenue.'
However, plenty of senior FTC types, as well as other high-ranking US
politicians, including a certain Donald John Trump, have all had their greedy snouts
planted in this almost bottomless trough of foreign and domestic loot, set
before them by the bosses of a multiplication of 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM'
cultic rackets whose essentially identical, camouflaged criminal activities
they have conveniently refused to identify. Indeed, the number of senior FTC
officials who have sold their souls and signed lucrative employment contracts
with 'MLM' front-companies, or law and accountancy firms, co-opted to hear
no evil, see no evil and speak no evil, whilst playing along with the Big 'MLM'
Lie, is truly astonishing.
All this begs the not unreasonable question: other than
enabling a growing number of unoriginal gangs of devious cultic con artists to get
away with thieving from the entire planet for the best part of half a century,
what exactly has been the point of having such a spineless, easily-corrupted
and, therefore useless government agency as the FTC?, when in 'Ponzinomics,' simply
by telling the truth, one independent American does far-more to protect his
fellow citizens from the Big 'MLM' Lie, than the entire one thousand
five hundred+ FTC staff (including more than five hundred attorneys and seventy
economists, with an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars) have ever
done. In fact, Robert explains in great detail why, completely contrary to the
ambiguous official message broadcast by the FTC for decades, it has not just
been ‘a few bad apples,’ but all 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM
income/business opportunities' that have been centrally controlled ‘rigged-market
swindles,’ hiding their inevitable, effectively 100%, overall net-loss/churn
rates of endless-chains of transient losing investors. For the crack-pot
pseudo-economic theory which has been falsely-labelled the 'MLM business
model,' was maliciously designed to be flawed-financially, to the point
where it would be impossible for any so-called 'MLM' company to derive
the majority of its revenue lawfully from persons who are not the temporary unwitting
contractors of it, motivated by the false expectation of a future reward.
In even more accurate terms, 'MLM commercial' cults
have all comprised groups, and sub-groups, of susceptible individuals who have
been subjected to identifiable, co-ordinated devious techniques of coercive, social,
psychological and physical persuasion designed to shut down their critical and
evaluative faculties, and thereby convert them, without their fully informed
consent, to the self-perpetuating and self-gratifying, but ultimately self-destructive,
delusional belief that: endless recruitment + endless purchases by the
recruits = endless prosperity for the recruits. For this reason, Robert
FitzPatrick coined the word, 'Ponzinomics,' in an attempt to place an
appropriate label on the financially suicidal activity that, to their eternal
shame, generations of senior FTC officials, their advisers and political
masters, have permitted to be passed off and normalized around the world as, ‘a
viable and legal part of the direct selling industry.'
Thus, 'Ponzinomics' can be briefly defined as the
dark art of peddling unwitting persons infinite shares of their own
finite money, because what the FTC has consistently refused to acknowledge
publicly, is the undeniable fact that any claim, or implication, that one
penny of extra net-income, let alone life-changing sums of money, can be
generated lawfully by participating in an 'MLM income opportunity,' is dangerous
comic-book nonsense designed to entice and deceive. Indeed, it should be glaringly
obvious that the Big ‘MLM’ Lie is far-too-good to be true, whilst it's
no secret that what used to be the traditional direct selling industry (‘door-to-door
peddling’), has long-since died out. Its demise being due to many evolving
social and economic factors; not least the arrival of supermarkets,
hard-discount stores and online shopping. Furthermore, 'MLM' products/services
have been offered at fixed, often exorbitant, prices, rendering them effectively
unsaleable on the open market to persons with fully functioning critical and
evaluative faculties; whilst no so-called 'MLM' company has ever set
common-sense limits on the number of contractors being recruited, or on the
areas of population where these so-called 'distributors/direct sellers'
are supposed to find customers. Just imagine what would happen if the
bosses of McDonalds fixed the price of their company’s hamburgers at twice that
of their competitors and set no limits on the number of franchises they sold,
or any restrictions on the locations where all these demonstrably unviable catering
establishments were supposed to operate shoulder to shoulder?
Once the utter absurdity of the so-called 'MLM
business model' is fully understood, anyone with a modicum of common-sense,
and/or the most-rudimentary hands-on experience of commerce, ought to be
immediately able to deduce that no ‘Amway’ copycat front company can
ever have been, or will ever be, found by the FTC (or any other civil, or
criminal, law enforcement agency for that matter) voluntarily disclosing the
true results of its economically incestuous activities and operating lawfully.
Indeed, this ongoing situation is beyond farcical, because when asked the most
obvious of questions, it goes without saying that American regulators and their
academic advisers, have never been able to come up with one solitary example of
a so-called 'MLM' company that would be able pass independent rigorous
inspection. Yet despite the lengthy list of common-sense reasons proving that
there can be no such thing as ‘a viable and lawful MLM income:busines
opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of smug dunces with diplomas,
came up with a truly pointless and stupid ‘test.’ This boils down to them
throwing common-sense out of the window whilst laboriously trying, on rare
occasions and on a case-by-case basis, to prove that a so-called 'MLM' company,
suspected of being a dissimulated pyramid scheme (‘rigged market swindle’), has
not been deriving the overwhelming majority of its income lawfully from
authentic retail sales (based entirely on value and demand) to members of the
general public (persons who were not unwitting, temporary adherents of the Big ‘MLM’
Lie motivated by the false expectation of a future reward).
Today (2026), the chronic failure of American regulators
to do their job and protect the public, has brought about a tragicomic situation
where, since 1979, less than forty ‘Amway’ copycats have been investigated
and shut down by the FTC as dissimulated pyramid schemes, whilst hundreds more
have continued to appear, but without the slightest attempt to stop them.
Laughably, FTC officials have listed other ‘pyramid scheme red flags' for the
public to look out for, and the agency has even posted warnings that 'MLM
companies have caused, and are still causing, extensive damage to consumers,
because some MLM income opportunities are pyramid schemes in disguise.' At
the same time, American regulators, without the slightest concern for the
extensive damage they themselves have caused and are still causing, have
continued bleating the Big Lie, by insisting that 'MLM is a legal (i.e.
commercially viable) branch of the direct selling industry.' Yet no one at
the FTC has ever seen a shred of quantifiable evidence proving that this ridiculous
adult fairy story can be true. In fact, when asked in the most specific
of terms, if they have ever seen such evidence, like income-tax payment
receipts, it has been impossible to get any meaningful, let alone the only
truthful, response to this simple ‘yes/no’ question. Another highly revealing
question that FTC types have obviously shied away from answering, is: what
would be your own reaction if a vulnerable individual you care about suddenly
underwent a radical personality transformation, and declared that he/she had
signed up for a so-called 'MLM income/business opportunity?
Consequently, in respect of their Orwellian refusal to
tell the truth publicly, and identify this textbook example of a Big Lie,
Robert FitzPatrick and I have openly ridiculed these inflexible FTC officials,
and their equally inflexible advisers, by comparing them to a body of humourless
scientists who have been paid to investigate the manifestly preposterous claim
that 'pigs might fly.' However, after decades of examining an assortment
of wingless swine, all labelled as ‘flying pigs,’ they still insist on
continuing their futile, but financially profitable, quest whilst
systematically rejecting any suggestion that there can be no such mythical creature.
At this point, I should perhaps declare that, although I
am an 'MLM commercial' cult survivor, I was never an adherent of one of
these pernicious groups. I was, however, an indirect victim. For regrettably, I
found myself shackled financially to a person, my only brother, who at a time
of vulnerability, had fallen completely under the spell of the Big 'MLM' Lie.
Again, when these disturbing events started to unfold, I did not fully understand
that my brother was perfect prey to be lured and defrauded, then used as chronically
bedazzled-bait to lure and defraud others; all for the benefit of a little gang
of sanctimonious American billionaire-charlatans posing as 'Compassionate
Capitalists,' and whom he had never met. Yet my brother was an ideal
subject to be deceived, for the simple reason that he was totally convinced
that he was far too smart to be deceived. Sadly, once enslaved inside
the ‘MLM’ trap, the most powerful weapon in the hands of the criminals exploiting
him, was my brother’s own mind. However, initially I failed to grasp just how dangerously
deluded 'MLM commercial' cult adherents can be. That said, like many
people whom they approach, I immediately realised that they are living in a
parallel reality, completely obsessed with trying to recruit you into what is
quite clearly a ridiculous pyramid scheme, but which they insist is 'part of
the legal MLM direct selling industry and definitely not a pyramid scheme.' What
took me much longer to fathom, is that core-'MLM commercial' cult
adherents are also living by a parallel, and perverted, code of morality. Their
destructive, financially suicidal behaviour is controlled by the self-righteous
guided-delusion that, by recruiting you, and even by lying to you, they are ultimately
helping both themselves and you to achieve future redemption in a secure Utopian
existence - a form of Capitalist Paradise on Earth - where no one has a
job, but everyone is his/her ‘own boss’ - a happy, healthy, prosperous and free
'MLM business owner.'
Thus, it should always be remembered that chronic 'MLM'
adherents' belief can be quite genuine, but what they believe in, and have
bought into body and soul, is a colossal and bedazzling fake. The irony of all
this being, that the Big 'MLM' Lie has continued to thrive, because its most-fanatical
adherents have been tricked into wasting their own time and money spreading it
and hiding the truth about it, combined with legislators’, law enforcement
agents’, prosecutors’ and judges’ catastrophic failure to identify it
accurately. Although they have no idea what they are really involved in, active
'MLM' adherents are, in fact, proselytising-evangelists for a
camouflaged, non-rational, ritual belief system (call it a 'perverted religion'
if you like) which has been maliciously designed not only to spread like a contagion
- enticing, deceiving, robbing, exploiting and abusing susceptible individuals
and their friends and families - but also to load its victims with shame and
guilt for their inevitable failure to succeed, and thus, prevent them from
facing reality and complaining. Consequently, whilst they remain under the
control of the Big 'MLM' Lie, its most-dangerous adherents should
be seen for what they really are - the deluded deployable agents of a de facto syndicate
comprising the bosses of some the most widespread, socially, psychologically
and financially destructive organized cultic crime groups to have emerged in
recent history.
David Brear (copyright 2026)
