'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing' is a pernicious lie, and Paul Orberson and Tom Mills were its authors..

Sanctimonious 'MLM income opportunity' racketeer, Paul Orberson.

Paul Orberson's sanctimonious side-kick, Tom Mills.

Last month the US Federal Trade Commission and 3 state Attorney Generals triumphantly announced that they are finally doing their job. i.e. In defence of their employers (tax-payers), they have shut-down 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing Inc.,' a so-called 'national Multi-Level Marketing company,' which (after 12 long years without rigorous challenge to its authenticity or clear warning to the public) they now prefer to describe as a 'global pyramid scheme.'

http://factsaboutherbalife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fhtm-complaint.pdf
http://fr.scribd.com/doc/126723874/FHTM-Receiver-Report1-shows-owners-milked-company

Indeed, the FTC has even found it necessary to set up a 'hot line' to answer questions from distressed 'FHTM' adherents: (001) 202-326-2643. Classically, significant numbers of these formerly arrogant and self-righteous persons continue to cling to the ego-building fantasy that 'MLM' is a perfectly lawful, and highly-regulated, form of business and that they were 'Independent Business Owners following a proven, step-by-step, plan to achieve total financial freedom.'

In the adult world of quantifiable reality, the US federal authorities have called a halt to the version of the pernicious 'MLM' game of make-believe known as 'FHTM,' and an estimated 160 thousands deluded players are no longer allowed to act as de facto slaves for its handful of instigators. However, the remnants of the same mind-bending criminal enterprise is apparently still being allowed to operate in Canada, and elsewhere (including the UK), right under the noses of regulators and prosecutors.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/bad_fortune_for_herbalife_yEKK1coternt7dkOMCCgAK

Predictably, the day of the FTC's 'FHTM' announcement, the market-price of effectively-valueless 'Herbalife' shares, slumped a further 8%, and it can now only be a matter of time before the federal authorities close 'Herbalife.' 

http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/simon-davies-linkedin-herbalife-fhtm.pdf

Laughably, the person described as current 'Chief Analytics Officer' and former 'Chief Financial Officer' of 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing Inc. (FHTM)' is none other than Simon Davies, the former 'Internal Audit Director' of 'Herbalife Ltd. (HLF),' 1994-2006.

A whole flock of grinning 'FHTM' racketeers

The counterfeit corporate structures known as 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing,' (based in Lexington, Kentucky),  'Alan Clark Holdings LLC', 'FHTM Canada Inc.', and  'Fortune Network Marketing (UK) Limited', along with their sanctimonious bosses, Paul C. Orberson and side-kick, Thomas A. Mills, are being sued by the FTC (on behalf of the people), and by the Attorney Generals of Kentucky, North Carolina and Illinois (again on behalf of the people) for 'unfair and deceptive actions' which 'violate state and federal laws,' including 'misrepresenting' that the so-called 'FHTM MLM income opportunity' is 'a good way for average people to make substantial income and achieve financial independence.' 

Classically, the quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the so-called 'FHTM MLM income opportunity' has been effectively a means of committing financial suicide, but maliciously designed to silence its victims by indoctrinating them into the guilt-producing closed-logic belief that  only completely-positive, highly-motivated, hard-working persons who defer to the authority of their completely-positive, highly-motivated, hard-working leadership and who believe totally that they will achieve success: achieve success and that consequently, all persons who fail to achieve success in FHTM are a bunch of negative, worthless losers who only have themselves to blame. 

Prior to the case coming to trial, the Lexington HQ and warehouse of 'FHTM' have been raided and their contents seized by a receiver, Robb Evans (appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois). The counterfeit company's assets have been frozen and most 'FHTM' employees no longer have a job.

The Attorney General of Kentucky, Jack Conway

However, Kentucky Attorney General, Jack Conway, demonstrated a somewhat naive ignorance of the global, cultic phenomenon of blame-the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeering, when (apparently in all seriousness) he stated that:

'Today's actions are the beginning of the end for one of the most prolific pyramid schemes operating in North America.' 

In reality, the corporate-front known as 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing' forms part an overall pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity (as defined by the US Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970).  Sadly, US prosecutors don't yet seem to have grasped that 'FHTM'  is only a relatively small criminal enterprise in comparison with 'Amway', 'Herbalife', 'Nu Skin', 'Forever Living Products', etc., from which its grotesque modus operandi was copied.

In simple terms, since the instigation of the original 'MLM' racket, in the 1940s, the only real money flowing into all subsequent so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has come from the victims of inter-related-frauds.

Fraud 1. is what is popularly-called a pyramid scheme, but which I prefer to describe, in more-accurate terms, as a dissimulated closed-market swindle - this type of crime is based on planting the self-perpetuating, pernicious belief that never-ending recruitment + never-ending payments by the recruits = never-ending profits for the recruits. The bosses of numerous 'MLM' gangs have not only lied to, but they have also withheld key-information from their victims and from regulators about the real source of their revenue. In this way, they have laundered many billions of dollars of illegal investment payments (made on the false expectation of future reward) into their dissimulated closed-market swindles, by arbitrarily and falsely defining these payments as 'lawful sales' based on value and demand.

Fraud 2. is a form of advance fee fraud in which many billions of dollars of effectively-valueless materials have been peddled to the constantly-churning victims of fraud 1. on the pretext that these are 'business-building/training/motivation tools' which 'contain valuable secrets vital to achieving success.' In reality, it is through these fraudulent materials (usually comprising publications, recordings, tickets to meetings) that a never-ending chain of victims of fraud 1. have been indoctrinated to believe that failure to make money in 'MLM' must have been entirely their own fault.

David Brear (copyright 2013)