The full-truth about 'MLM' cultic racketeering remains unthinkable to BBC journalists.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-43049230/hun-this-could-be-your-opportunity-to-get-rich

In the above linked video, BBC journalists (no doubt under the guidance of lawyers) have not begun to identify so-called 'Multi Level Marketing' companies as having been the corporate-fronts for a world-wide criminogenic phenomenon. However, why should they?, when the fact that 'MLM income opportunity' cultic rackets have been allowed to operate in the UK for decades (right under the noses of: specialist financial journalists, regulators, law enforcement agents, legislators, etc.), has made the full-truth almost unthinkable.

These are just three of the common-sense questions which could have been put to the jargon-spouting 'MLM' shills who were interviewed for the recent BBC report, and who were apparently not asked to provide quantifiable evidence to support their anecdotal statements:

• How many persons in total have signed annual 'distributor contracts' to participate in your company's 'MLM income opportunity,' since it was first instigated ?
• What percentage of these persons have remained under contract for: more than one year, two years, three years, four years, five years, etc.?
• Could you offer any lawful reason why the key-information contained in the truthful answers to the above questions has never been disclosed publicly?

To their credit, the BBC journalists (and their legal advisers) did allow the word, 'cult,' to be broadcast in the report. They have also confirmed that, in the UK, the overwhelming majority of persons currently being ensnared by the pernicious 'MLM' fairy story are women.

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' (aka 'Network 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 rigged-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.).
• Apart from an insignificant minority of exemplary shills who pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan, the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always  been effectively 100%.

About 20 years ago, I coined the phrase: 'dissimulated closed/rigged-market swindle,' as a brief overall formulation of what are popularly known as: Ponzi schemes, pyramid scams, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc. Although a few commentators have adopted my term, legalistically there is still no such thing as a 'dissimulated closed/rigged-market swindle.' 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 authorising the very crime which you were apparently trying to prohibit. 

The lie which is fundamental to all 'closed/rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first handing over their own money to participate in an (alleged) profitable commercial opportunity which is secretly an economically-unviable fake, due to the fact that the (alleged) opportunity has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own ill-informed contributing participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate closed/rigged-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment 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 their products/services have actually been regularly re-sold to the general public for profit in significant quantities (based on value and demand), 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money (in the false expectation of future reward).

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

David Brear (copyright 2018)