Wednesday 26 April 2017

Petition to stop the 'Herbalife (HLF)' mob buying association with The Great Run Company.

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STOP PRESS

In just a few days, around 2000 people signed the petition requesting that 'The Great Run Company' end its partnership with 'Herbalife.'

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but since the article (below) was posted this morning, 'Herbalife's' sponsorship deal with 'The Great Run Company' has been cancelled and 'Herbalife's' logo has already vanished from 'The Great Run Company's' Website.





Having taken into account feedback, we have decided not to proceed with a partnership with Herbalife.

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Statutory Warning

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:
  • what has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science.
  • the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, 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 closed-market swindles or 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.).


  • the latest attempts by the bosses of the 'MLM' front-company known as 'Herbalife' to infiltrate traditional culture in the UK (via sponsorship of 'The Great Run Company') forms part of an overall pattern of ongoing major racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, 1970).

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Image result for Great run
Image result for brendan foster
Brendan Foster

The Great North Run was created in 1981 when popular European and Commonwealth middle-distance running champion, Brendan Foster, organised a half marathon in his native North-East England. Since then, the Great North Run has developed into the world’s most-celebrated half marathon and the UK’s most-popular running event with almost 60,000 participants.
In 1988, Nova International Ltd was established to manage all Great Run assets.
From its initial event, the company has expanded to comprise a portfolio of events which also include various mass-participation running, swimming, and cycling, events and family activities.




In 2014 the Great North Run became the first event in the world to be officially recognised by the IAAF for achieving one million individual finishes.



Image result for Great run company


In March 2015 Nova International became The Great Run Company.


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  • Simplyhealth
  •  
  • Puma
  •  
  • Aqua-pura
  •  
  • duracell
  •  
  • Garmin
  •  
  • BBC-Sport
  •  
  • Arcadis
  •  
  • Pure Gym
  •  
  • Athetics Weekly
  •  
  • Nirvana Europe
  •  
  • Just Giving
  •  
  • Herbal Life
  •  
  • Ibuleve
http://www.greatrun.org/


A couple of days ago, I began to receive various complaints that the 'Herbalife' mob had bought association with The Great Run Company and other sponsors, including the BBC. I was also informed that a petition had been started to persuade The Great Run Company's management to change their minds.

Blog readers are invited to sign this petition.


https://www.change.org/p/great-run-great-run-to-end-their-nutrition-partnership-with-herbalife?recruiter=408695791&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive


David Brear (copyright 2017)



Friday 14 April 2017

Robert FitzPatrick explains HR 5230

The political landscape concerning pyramid selling schemes has dramatically changed with the election of Donald Trump. The changes include a MLM-connected president and Cabinet who will likely call off the regulators. A recent Slate article documents Trump’s and his Cabinet’s and advisor’s ties to MLM and quotes a pro-MLM financial analyst, “When (Amway’s) Betsy DeVos was named to the Trump Cabinet we took that as a very strong signal that the Trump administration had no real issue with the MLM world. … We are in a post-regulatory world.
With the election there is now also a stronger possibility for passage of a new national law to protect MLMs, such as Herbalife, Amway, Nuskin and Usana, among hundreds of others. The bill is written and pushed by the MLM-lobbying group, Direct Selling Association. This goes beyond “de-regulation” to “alternative-legality,” a consequence of “alternative facts.”
The bill is HR 5230. If it had passed last year when it was introduced, it is questionable the Federal Trade Commission could have imposed the $200 million refund payment to 350,000 consumers and drastic restructuring on MLM’s flagship, Herbalife. HR5230 promises to sweep away the specter of pyramid scheme prosecution that haunts all MLMs. It does this by changing the distinction of “legitimate MLM”, on which all prosecutions have been based for 40 years. The practices determined by the FTC and federal courts to be “unfair and deceptive”, and which were recently banned in the Herbalife prosecution, would be made legal.
Fraud by Any Other Name
Yet the fundamentals that define pyramid scheme fraud and its inexorable harmful effects have not changed, and never will. For this reason, the controversy, protests, class action lawsuits and short-selling around “multi-level marketing”, aka “MLM,” will not cease, despite the election. The proposed law may restrict regulators, but it will not change the reality on which years of prosecutions are based.
A pyramid scheme is not illegal due to any administration or any special law and it cannot be made legal by enacting a law or by halting law enforcement. A pyramid scheme is illegal because of its inherent deception and the inevitable harm it always must cause. Pyramid schemes are frauds per se. An endless chain proposition that requires payments to participate and in which recruiting new people whose own payments to gain the right to recruit provide the promised “profit” are fraudulent by design. The losses and the intrinsic deception will be the same, law or no law. Fraud is fraud, by any other name.
Though the FTC has been inconsistent in pyramid matters, it has built up a war chest of federal court rulings that are based on a common sense, fact-based recognition of the elements of a pyramid scheme disguised as “direct selling” and “multi-level marketing.” These rulings consistently recognize a categorical distinction between a sales business based on profitable retail sales by individuals in the open market, and a closed, “endless chain” recruitment system in which the participants themselves are the primary buyers and where profit requires both ongoing product purchases to get access to the recruiting profits and perpetually extending the “endless chain.” This is flim-flam, a money trap, financial fraud, a racket, or what is commonly called “pyramid scheme.”
Changing Reality by Changing Words
In accordance with these court rulings, the FTC has referenced a definition of a theoretical “legitimate” MLM (without ever naming one) as “a business model in which a company distributes products through a network of distributors who earn income from their own retail sales of the product and from retail sales made by the distributors‘ direct and indirect recruits.” (emphasis added)
The problem is that many trusted MLMs have turned out not to be the retail-based sales companies described by the FTC as “legitimate MLM.” They were revealed as pyramid recruiting schemes only disguised as sales businesses. This jarring contradiction was verified in series of recent FTC, SEC and DOJ prosecutions of MLMs, Burnlounge, Fortune High Tech Marketing, Vemma, Zeek Rewards, Telexfree and Herbalife, in which millions of American households had lost billions, in the belief they were “legal MLM.”
Under HR5230, they likely would have been. With a clever insertion of a few key words, the bill eliminates the fundamental distinction applied by the regulators, prohibiting recruiting-based rewards and play-to-play purchase requirements that must lead to losses for the “last ones in”, i.e., the vast majority. Instead of a business being determined legal or illegal based on facts of its operation, the bill shifts the required proof of illegality to a “motive”. Yet, when the whole purpose of a fraud is to deceive the victims, how can the fraud be determined by the “motive” of the people being deceived? MLM pyramids use products to divert victims from seeing that they are paying for the right to recruit others who pay for the right to recruit. They are led to think it’s about “products” even though no one makes any money from personally selling the products.
HR5230 creates a new definition of “pyramid scheme” that cleanses the classic toxic practices of “endless chain”, closed market, payment for rights to recruit and rewards gained from the recruits’ payments – as long as the promised rewards are derived from “purchases”. In other words, if the pyramid money transfer is laundered through product-purchases, everything is suddenly legal.  Under HR5230, no longer would the MLM have to generate funds from the external retail market like all other sales businesses do. It could merely re-label the reward-incentivized and quota-driven purchases of participants inside a closed market as “sales.” Those who pay for eligibility to gain recruiting rewards by making “qualifying purchases” and are supposedly “distributors” are now renamed “ultimate users”, just like shoppers in a department store. It’s an alternative reality to provide alternative legality.
The final transformation into legality would be achieved with one key word in the HR5230, “solely”. The government henceforth would have to prove not only that the MLM is designed as a pyramid scheme, which is actually easy to do, but that those who were duped into joining had only one “sole” motive for making purchases – to gain pyramid recruiting rewards. Anything less than “sole”, such as maybe trying the product, or being led to think the product is good, or maybe hoping the product is worth the price as well as providing “unlimited income” — those ambiguous and multiple motives would convert the recruiting-reward-endless-chain plan into innocent “direct selling.” Even if the person purchased “unreasonable” amounts of product, still all is okay unless the government can prove a “sole” motive for the purchases of money-making. Of course, proving a “sole” motive, (especially inside a fraud)  is impossible. Hence, an alternative “legality” is established for MLMs.
This proposed law, ironically, is named the “Anti-Pyramid Promotional Scheme Act.” To reveal its true intent and effect, Congress and citizens can just drop the word “anti.”


Robert FitzPatrick (copyright 2017)

Tuesday 11 April 2017

'NuSkin (NuS)' racketeers peddle a latter-day 'Philosophers' Stone' / 'Elixir of Life.'



Statutory Warning

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:
  • what has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science.
  • the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, 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 closed-market swindles or 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.).


Image result for dietrick van nederveen
Dietrick Van Nederveen


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A truly unique 'MLM' whistle blower/insider is Dietrick Van Nederveen, who spent 1995-2000 married to Sandie Tillotson (one of the multi-millionaire 'Mormon' instigators of 'NuSkin' ). 

Dietrick is also the father of Sandie Tillotson's daughter.


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Image result for dietrick van nederveen


For five years, at a series of classic reality-inverting ritual 'MLM' performances, Dietrick (a larger-than-life former model and actor) was paraded around the world by Sandie Tillotson (and her criminal associates) as a glowing example of perfect 'NuSkin' youth, health and beauty. When he finally confronted the truth that he'd been used to lure unsuspecting victims into a bedazzling fraud, although threatened with a malicious multi-million dollar lawsuit, Dietrick bravely tried to warn the public by creating a Website and writing a book. However, mainly due to the fact that he desperately wanted to maintain contact with his daughter, Dietrick was manipulated again and eventually silenced. 

Blog readers might be interested to learn that, due to the fact that Sandie Tillotson failed to honour her side of a legal agreement, a liberated, and much-better informed, Dietrick Van Nederveen could be about to reappear in the ongoing tragicomic 'NuSkin' saga.



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See original image



The 'NuSkin' racketeers will be taking a very dangerous risk entering a public court with Dietrick Van Nederveen, because he (and his attorneys) are now able to explain (and provide supporting evidence) that 'NuSkin' has been the corporate-front for an 'Amway' copy-cat blame-the-victim 'MLM' cultic racket - the instigators of which, like those of 'Herbalife,' have been allowed to peddle effectively-valueless shares in their dissimulated criminal enterprise on Wall St. 

'Amway' copy-cats have invariably peddled a mystifying, heady cocktail of 'medical,' 'political' and 'economic' pseudo-science, with a dash of 'religious' sacred science thrown in.




Unlike 'Herbalife,' 'NuSkin'  has yet to feature in a documentary film, but the two rackets are virtually identical in their modus operandi. Indeed, since the instigation of the so-called 'Herbalife Opportunity' in 1979 and the 'Nuskin Opportunity' in (the deeply-ironic year of) 1984, the overall hidden loss/churn rates for participation in both, has been effectively 100%.



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Amongst the effectively-unsaleable, pseudo-scientific wampum products that the 'NuSkin' Racketeers have used to launder billions of dollars of unlawful losing investment payments, is 'ageLoc' - a latter-day 'Fountain of Youth' or  'Elixir of Life,' but then this is hardly surprising, because the peddlers of the 'MLM' fairy story are 'Economic Alchemists.' 






The 'Philosophers' Stone' and the 'Elixir of Life,' have been the most-commonly recognised made-up names for a fictional secret (occult) substance supposedly given to mankind by God, but then lost to be sought by 'Alchemists', because it can turn non-precious metals into precious metals (particularly gold) and can extend human life and cure all disease.

There have been various other comic-book properties ascribed to the so-called 'Philosophers' Stone.' Including: the transformation of common crystals into gemstones (particularly diamonds), the creation of perpetually burning flames, the creation of lifeforms ('homunculus') resembling humans, etc.


It is not known exactly where, or when, this mystifying 'Alchemicical' pseudo-scientific bullshit was first dreamt up, but a version of it can be found all the way back in ancient Greece.



David Brear (copyright 2017)