'Utility Warehouse' cult again partly exposed by 'The Guardian.'

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/07/utility-warehouse-is-its-life-changing-scheme-really-ab-fab








This morning, an article appeared in The Guardian, which begins to warn the public about the blame-the-victim 'Multi-Level Marketing' cultic racket known as 'Utility Warehouse.'

It should be noted that all transient 'Utility Warehouse' adherents, no matter how they have been arbitrarily labelled on their contracts, have been told that, in theory, they can earn unlimited sums of money by following a 'Stairway to Success' - i.e. regularly purchasing their utility services from 'UW' and by recruiting more people to buy their utility services from 'UW, etc. ad infinitum. 

https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/partner-help/partner/answer/stairway-to-success

What's the Stairway to Success?

There are eight steps on the Stairway of Success.  Each step will earn you a higher residual income as your business grows.

Step 1 – Distributor

This is when you first join us.

Step 2 – Qualified Distributor (QD)

To be promoted to QD, you must have gathered three personal members.

Step 3 – Team Leader (TL)

To be promoted to Team Leader, you'll have gathered ten personal members, have a group customer base of 50 members and have three QDs in your team.

Step 4 – Senior Team Leader (STL)

To be promoted to Senior Team Leader, you'll have gathered 15 personal members, have a group customer base of 250 members and have three QDs and two TLs in your team.

Step 5 – Group Leader (GL)

To be promoted to Group Leader, you'll have gathered 20 personal members, have a group customer base of 750 members and have two QDs, three TLs and one STL in your team.

Step 6 – Senior Group Leader (SGL)

To be promoted to Senior Group Leader, you'll have gathered 25 personal members, have a group customer base of 2000 members and have three TLs, two STLs and one GL in your team.

Step 7 - National Group Leader (NGL)

To be promoted to National Group Leader, you'll have 50 personal members, have a group customer base of 7000 members and have one TL, two STLs, two GLs, and two SGLs in your team.

Step 8 – National Network Leader (NNL)

To be promoted to Group Leader you'll have 100 personal members, have a group customer base of 25000 members and have in your team two STLs, three GLs, two SGLs, and 1 NGL in your team.

In addition to these steps, as a NNL, you can increase your income by earning up to five ‘stars’, as the size of your business continues to grow. The criteria for earning NNL stars are as follows:

1 Star NNL = 100000 Group Customers

2 Star NNL = 175000 Group Customers

3 Star NNL = 250000 Group Customers

4 Star NNL = 375000 Group Customers

5 Star NNL = 500000 Group Customers

Part-transcript of a 'Utility Warehouse' recruitment video, 2017
 (presented by Joanna Lumley)

"Becoming a Utility Warehouse partner is easy and risk free

Even the joining fee is fully refundable

If you have second thoughts after your training you'll get it back no questions asked.

You can work on your business part time, full time or from time to time.

It's like a mini franchise, but without any financial risk or stock to buy.

Spend a few hours per week building your business and you will quickly find yourself earning an extra few hundred pounds each month.

Keep going, work a little harder and you could earn thousands of pounds extra each month

You don't need to be a salesman, a utility expert or a workaholic, just organised and committed and passionate about helping others to save money and building a better future for yourself

And you won't be thrown in at the deep end - you'll get help every step of the way with free training an experienced mentor and local support groups who will share their knowledge and experience with you.

Every time you introduce a new member to Utility Warehouse, you'll get paid.

The more new members you introduce: the more you'll earn, it's that simple.

And what's more you will continue to get paid a % of their Utility bill for as long as they stay a member.

That means every time they boil a kettle, switch on the heating, make a phone call, you'll get paid.

But it doesn't stop there.

If the members you introduce become a partner like you and sign up the people they know you'll get paid again - a small part of their utility spend every month.

That could mean a regular extra income for life.

And there's another reward that I really love - seeing more and more people share in the success of Utility Warehouse, not just cutting their household bills, but as a partner fulfilling their ambitions and dreams.

There's no limit to how far or how fast your business can grow.

Start small with the people you know and grow big with the people you don't.

Tens of thousands of people have already become Utility Warehouse partners and are reaping the rewards financially socially and through gaining new skills and confidence.

It's a purple army that is leading a revolution in the way that people buy their utility services.

Why don't you join them?

It could earn you financial freedom for life."

Joanna Lumley 

Behind this pernicious Utopian fairy story (fronted by well-chosen celebrities, including Joanna Lumley), has lurked the classic cultic advance fee fraud, in which a never-ending chain of ill-informed core -victims (who cannot make a penny of net profit no matter how much time, effort and cash they commit) have been peddled effectively valueless publications, recordings tickets to meetings, etc., on the pretext that these materials contain the secrets of 'MLM' success.

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/hemsby-man-vincent-daly-admits-fraud-against-sue-weaver-over-utility-warehosue-fraud-1-6374145

Last month, a 'UW' adherent, Vincent Daly  (an airline steward living on the SE coast of England), was convicted of defrauding another 'UW' adherent out of £12500.

 

According to reports, 'UW' bosses have refunded, but Vincent Daly was definitely acting under the influence of 'UW's' fictitious controlling scenario when he recruited his victim and obtained access to her credit card.

Indeed, the victim was one of Vincent Daly's best friends and she was ensnared after the death of her partner. 'UW' adherents have been instructed that family members and friends are the first persons whom they should attempt to recruit.  

Classically, Vincent Daly has now been publicly excommunicated from 'UW' to protect the racketeers monopoly of information. The 'UW' bosses have predictably pretended that Vincent Daly's crime is entirely his own responsibility and completely against their company's rules and ethics.

It is suspected that Vincent Daly might have recruited/defrauded several people in his village in Norfolk, but they have not yet come forward.

Vincent Daly seems to have been involved in various 'MLM' cults. Today, he still had a youtube channel up and running containing the evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8a8fWu63t8wxw6eDuI-4LQ

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'Multi-Level Marketing' Warning.


The following deconstructed analysis has been formulated to sharpen the critical and evaluative faculties of all unwary persons approaching so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be a business/industry, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they don't really know what it is.

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More than half a century of quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:

• the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' (a.k.a. 'Network Marketing') is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational,  cultic, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap. 

• the impressive-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,' is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as  reality, 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 'Long Cons*'  - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles**, a.k.a. 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 shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100%.

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*A 'Long Con' is a form of fraud maliciously designed to exploit victims' existing beliefs and instinctual desires and make them falsely-believe that they are exercising a completely free-choice. 'Long Cons' comprise an enticing structured-scenario of control acted out as reality over an extended period. Like theatrical plays, 'Long Cons' are written, directed and produced. They involve leading players and supporting players as well as props, sets, extras, costumes, script, etc. The hidden objective of 'Long Cons' is to convince unwary persons that fiction is fact and fact is fiction, progressively cutting them off from external reality. In this way, victims begin unconsciously to play along with the controlling-scenario and (in the false-expectation of future reward) large sums of money or valuables can be stolen from them. Classically, the victims of 'Long Cons' can become deluded to such an extent that they will abandon their education, jobs, careers, etc., empty their bank accounts, and/or beg, steal, borrow from friends, family members, etc.

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** The enticing structured-scenario of control fundamental to all 'rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first contributing their own money to participate in a profitable commercial opportunity, but 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 participants. For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate 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/services can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities via expanding networks of distributors. However, since 'MLM' products/services cannot be regularly re-sold to the general public for a 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). 

Thus, in 'MLM' rackets, the innocent looking products/sevices' function has been to hide what is really occurring - i.e The operation of an unlawful, intrinsically fraudulent, rigged-market where effectively no non-salaried (transient) participant can generate an overall net-profit, because, unknown to the non-salaried (transient) participants, the market is in a permanent state of collapse and requires its non-salaried (transient) participants to keep finding further (temporary) de facto slaves to sustain the enticing illusion of stability and viability.

Meanwhile an insignificant (permanent) minority direct the 'Long Con' - raking in vast profits by selling into the rigged-market and by controlling/withholding all key-information concerning the rigged-market's actual catastrophic, ever-shifting results from its never-ending chain of (temporary) de facto slaves.

Although cure-all pills potions and vitamin/dietary supplements, household and beauty, products have been most-prevalent, it is possible to use any product, and/or service, to dissimulate a rigged-market swindle. There are even some 'MLM' rackets that have been hidden behind well-known traditional brands (albeit offered at fixed high prices). Some 'MLM' rackets have included 'cash-back/discount shopping cards, travel products, insurance, energy/communications services' and 'crypto-currencies' in their controlling scenarios.

No matter what bedazzling product/service has been dangled as bait, in 'MLM' rackets, there has been no significant or sustainable source of revenue other than never-ending chains of contractees of the 'MLM' front companies. These front-companies always pretend that their products/services are high quality and reasonably-priced and that for anyone prepared to put in some effort, the products/services can be sold on for a profit via expanding networks of distributors based on value and demand. In reality, the underlying reason why it has mainly only been (transient) 'MLM' contractees who have bought the various products /services (and not the general public) is because they have been tricked into unconsciously playing along with the controlling scenario which constantly says that via regular self-consumption and the recruitment of others to do the same, etc. ad infinitum, anyone can receive a future (unlimited) reward.

I've been examining the 'MLM' phenomenon for around 20 years. During this time, I've yet to find one so-called 'MLM' company that has voluntarily made key-information available to the public concerning the quantifiable results of its so-called 'income opportunity'.

Part of the key-information that all 'MLM' bosses seek to hide concerns the overall number of persons who have signed contracts since the front companies were instigated and the retention rates of these contractees. 

When rigorously investigated, the overall hidden net-loss churn rates for so-called 'MLM income opportunites' has turned out to have been effectively 100%. Thus, anyone claiming (or implying) that it is possible for anyone to make a penny of net-profit, let alone a living, in an 'MLM,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide quantifiable evidence to back up his/her anecdotal claims.

Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by commercial regulators, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades.

The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred, must have been entirely their own fault for not working hard enough. 

Blog readers should observe how (in the above linked-videos) chronic victims of 'MLM' cults are incapable of describing what they were subjected to in accurate terms. Even though they are no longer physically playing along with the 'Long Con's' controlling-scenario, they unconsciously continue to think, and speak, using the jargon-laced 'MLM' script - illogically describing themselves as 'Distributors.' 

Chronic victims of blame-the-victim cultic rackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering cult victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse):

depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc. 

David Brear (copyright 2019)