'MLM' has been just another means of dissimulating a closed-market swindle

About 15 years ago, I coined the common-sense phrase: 'premeditated, or dissimulated, closed-market swindle,' in order to deconstruct all Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc. However, although a few commentators have used my term (sometimes without attribution), a 'closed-market swindle' is not yet defined in law. That said, 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. Common-sense also reveals that, by 'passing any law, but failing to enforce it, has the effect of authorizing the very crime which you are trying to prohibit.' 

The lie which is fundamental to all 'closed-market swindles' is that people can earn income by contributing their own money to participate in any alleged 'profitable commercial activity' which is secretly an economically-unviable fake, due to the fact that the alleged 'profitable commercial activity' has no significant, or sustainable, source of revenue other than its own participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate closed-market swindles by offering their victims various banal, but grossly-over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products and/or services, can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities. However, since no gang of 'MLM' racketeers has ever proved that 'MLM' wampum has actually been regularly re-sold to the general public for profit in significant quantities, 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money.

In the final analysis, other than their ephemeral external presentations, internally there is no real difference between all closed-market swindles; for any alleged 'opportunity to make money,' wherein (when challenged, and/or rigorously investigated) the promoters are unable to provide independent quantifiable evidence to prove that their alleged 'profitable commercial activity' has had any significant, and sustainable, source of revenue other than its own participants, is self-evidently a dissimulated closed-market swindle.     

Several years ago, I discovered that no one would listen when I tried to complain about 'MLM income opportunity' fraud. No matter how clear the explanation, talking to trade regulators in Europe and the USA (who, in theory, are paid by the public to act in the interests of the public), was the same as trying to rouse a bunch of guards who had fallen asleep on the job; so I began to try to stimulate the critical faculties of these characters, by asking them:

• what exactly are your own achievements in the field of regulation?
• what quantifiable evidence can you provide which proves that you have represented good-value for tax-payers or that you have served any practical purpose?

After all, if you were going to hire anyone (from a plumber to an accountant), you'd first want to know if that person knew what he/she was doing. When I failed to receive any intelligible reply to my questions, I was forced to draw the inescapable conclusion that 'regulators' have been a significant part of the problem of  'MLM income opportunity' fraud, and not the solution to it.

My attitude towards senior government officials prompted an American academic to advise me that I wouldn't get anywhere by being rude to regulators.  However, at precisely this time, a bunch of  alleged guardians of the American public were in denial of what is now universally-recognized as one of the most outrageous frauds of modern times.

Harry Markopolos

A man called Harry Markopolos had discovered that no one would listen when he tried to complain about the obvious criminal activities of Bernie Madoff; so he had begun to ask essentially the same common-sense questions as myself, about the purpose of paying 'regulators' who don't regulate. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s68FR1MXT8Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw_Tgu0txS0

Had senior officials from the US Securities and Exchange Commission acted on Harry Markopolos' first complaint, called Bernie Madoff's bluff and demanded that he show his hand (i.e. independent quantifiable evidence that he had actually been making all the profitable trades on the stock market which he claimed), then Madoff could have been arrested in 2000. Instead, SEC officials allowed Madoff's dissimulated closed-market swindle to continue to spread around the globe like a virus. 

David Brear (copyright 2012)