Trump paid millions by 'MLM' racketeers - now trying to sack one of the chiefs of the Federal Trade Commission.

 ‘Naked power grab’: FTC Chief FIRED by Trump speaks out - YouTube

Donald Trump, a man who has received millions of stolen $ from at least one gang of 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers, is currently dismantling elements the US government which were ostensibly developed to benefit, and/or protect, the public. Many observers are throwing up their hands in horror at Trump's attempt to decide who sits on the Federal Trade Commission. However, in respect of the 'MLM commercial' cult phenomenon, the FTC has already proved itself not only to be impotent, but also to be one of the racketeers' best friends.

Amazon.com: Ponzinomics, the Untold Story of Multi-Level Marketing eBook : FitzPatrick, Robert L.: Kindle Store

In 2019, my American associate, Robert FitzPatrick, published 'Ponzinomics.' In this book, Robert not only goes a long way towards identifying the true nature of the 'MLM commercial' cult phenomenon, but he also traces the history and origins of the Big 'MLM' Lie and explains how a pair of its earliest creators managed to obtain the highest-level of protection in the USA. As a result, politically appointed senior Federal Trade Commission officials effectively raised the white flag of surrender to predatory criminals, albeit dressed up as respectable businessmen, when, starting in the 1970s and despite significant levels of complaint, they set aside an established, common-sense legal precedent which had automatically identified and banned endless-chain recruitment frauds, previously labelled as, 'pyramid selling schemes.' For, even though it was under investigation and facing civil prosecution, these senior officials latched onto a convenient pretext not to go ahead and shut-down the corporate-front for the original 'MLM commercial' cult upon which all subsequent versions have been, and continue to be, modelled. This dubious decision was evidently made because the bosses of 'Amway,' Messrs. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, with a Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other, had purchased association with their local congressman (fifth Michigan district) with significant quantities of stolen money. The beneficiary of these ill-gotten gains was none other than Gerald Rudolph Ford Jnr. - a politician not exactly noted for his intellectual capacity, but nonetheless someone of great influence.

For those readers who are perhaps too young to remember him, Gerald Ford was leader of the Republican party in the House of Representatives 1965-1973, becoming US vice-president under Richard Nixon when, in 1973, Spiro Agnew (who was under investigation for corruption), pled guilty to a minor felony charge and was obliged to resign. Ford went on to become US president 1974-1976 after Nixon himself was obliged to resign. Thus, Ford remains the only person to have held both the office of US vice-president and US president, without being elected to either. He is also the president who granted a pardon to Nixon for the crimes he'd committed whilst in office.

However, the coopting of Gerald Ford to play the role of ‘Amway’s’ useful idiot was only one step in DeVos and Van Andel’s well-financed infiltration, and subversion, of the US legislative process and justice system. Indeed, there can be absolutely no doubt that, culminating in 1979, the chiefs of an important civil regulatory agency of the US federal government played politics, and in so doing, completely failed in their appointed task of protecting the American public. As a direct consequence, the FTC brought about the birth of the essentially meaningless phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing is legal.' In this way, an absurd, but nonetheless insidious, endless-chain recruitment fraud was effectively authorized in the USA. Furthermore, this major American regulatory lapse enabled the profitable racket of 'MLM commercial' cultism not only to be extensively duplicated in the USA, but also to be exported around the world, now hidden behind the pretence that ‘the MLM business model (as developed by the founders of the Amway Corporation) had been examined and approved by the US government.' Not surprisingly, subsequent generations of politically appointed senior FTC officials have all refused to admit publicly to their predecessors' catastrophic failure and their own negligence - for which, one day, a sitting American government might find itself liable. In this way, the Big ‘MLM’ Lie was permitted to transform and expand into a well-oiled machine for stealing and laundering money on a global scale - each year bringing billions of dollars into the USA, and all right under the noses of officials who have continued to allow this plunder to be falsely-declared, with the paid-compliance of some of the world's largest accountancy firms, as 'retail sales revenue.' However, plenty of senior FTC types, as well as high-ranking US politicians, including a certain Donald John Trump, have all had their snouts planted in this almost bottomless trough of foreign and domestic loot, set before them by the bosses of a multiplication of 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM' rackets whose essentially identical camouflaged criminal activities they have conveniently refused to identify. Indeed, the number of senior FTC officials who have accepted, and continue to accept, tempting offers of well-paid employment from 'MLM' front-companies, or law and accountancy firms, co-opted to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil whilst playing along with the Big 'MLM' Lie, is truly astonishing.

All this begs the not unreasonable question: other than enabling a growing number of unoriginal gangs of devious con artists to get away with thieving from the entire planet for the best part of half a century, what exactly has been the point of having such a spineless, easily-corrupted and, therefore useless government agency as the FTC?, when in 'Ponzinomics' one independent American does far-more to protect his fellow citizens from the Big 'MLM' Lie, than the entire one thousand five hundred + FTC staff (including more than five hundred attorneys and seventy economists, with an annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars) have ever done. In fact, Robert explains in great detail why, completely contrary to the ambiguous official message broadcast by the FTC for more than forty years, it has not just been ‘a few bad apples,’ but all 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM Income Opportunities' that have been centrally controlled rigged-market swindles, hiding their inevitable effectively 100% overall net-loss/churn rates of endless-chains of transient participants. For the crack-pot pseudo-economic theory which has been falsely-labelled the 'MLM business model,' was maliciously designed to be flawed-financially, to the point where it would be impossible for any so-called 'MLM' company to derive the majority of its revenue lawfully from persons who are not its own ill-informed investors motivated by the false expectation of a future reward. In even more accurate terms, 'MLM/commercial' cults have all comprised groups, and sub-groups, of susceptible individuals who have been subjected to identifiable, co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion designed to shut down their critical and evaluative faculties, and thereby convert them, without their fully informed consent, to the self-perpetuating, and self-destructive, non-rational belief that: endless recruitment + endless purchases by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits. For this reason, Robert FitzPatrick coined the word, 'Ponzinomics,' in an attempt to place an appropriate label on the financially suicidal activity that, to their eternal shame, generations of senior FTC officials, their advisers and political masters, have permitted to be passed off and normalized around the world as, ‘a viable and legal part of the direct selling industry.' 

Thus, 'Ponzinomics' can be briefly defined as the dark art of peddling vulnerable persons infinite shares of their own finite money, because what the FTC has consistently refused to acknowledge publicly, is the undeniable fact that any claim, or implication, that one penny of extra net-income, let alone life-changing sums of money, can be generated lawfully by participating in an 'MLM business opportunity,' is dangerous comic-book nonsense designed to entice and deceive. Indeed, it should be glaringly obvious that the Big 'MLM' Lie is far-too-good to be true, whilst it's no secret that what used to be the traditional direct selling industry (once known as ‘door-to-door peddling’), has long-since died out. Its demise being due to many evolving social and economic factors; not least the arrival of supermarkets, hard-discount stores and online shopping. Furthermore, 'MLM' products/services have been offered at fixed, often exorbitant, prices, rendering them effectively unsaleable on the open market to persons with fully functioning critical and evaluative faculties; whilst no so-called 'MLM' company has ever set common-sense limits on the number of contractors being recruited, or on the areas of population where these so-called 'distributors/direct sellers' are supposed to find customers. Just imagine what would happen if the bosses of McDonalds fixed the price of their company’s hamburgers at twice that of their competitors and set no limits on the number of franchises they sold, or any restrictions on the locations where all these demonstrably unviable catering establishments were supposed to operate shoulder to shoulder?

Once the utter absurdity of the so-called 'MLM business model,' is fully understood, anyone with a modicum of common-sense, and/or the most-rudimentary hands-on experience of commerce, ought to be immediately able to deduce that no ‘Amway’ copy-cat so-called 'MLM' company can ever have been, or will ever be, found by the FTC voluntarily disclosing the true results of its economically incestuous activities and operating lawfully. Indeed, this ongoing situation is beyond farcical, because when asked the most obvious of questions, American trade regulators, and their academic advisers, have never been able to come up with even one solitary example of a so-called 'MLM' company that would be able pass independent rigorous inspection. Yet despite the lengthy list of common-sense reasons proving that there can be no such mythical creature as ‘a viable and legal MLM direct selling income opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of dunces with diplomas, came up with a truly pointless and stupid ‘test.’ This boils down to them throwing common-sense out of the window whilst trying, on rare occasions and on a case-by-case basis, to determine that a so-called 'MLM' company, suspected of being a pyramid scheme, has not been deriving the majority of its income lawfully from authentic retail sales (i.e. based on value and demand) to members of the general public (i.e. persons who have not been ill-informed contractors the so-called 'MLM' company).

Laughably, FTC officials have listed other ‘pyramid scheme red flags' for the public to look out for, and the agency has even posted stern warnings that 'MLM companies have caused, and are still causing, extensive damage to consumers, because some MLM income opportunities are actually pyramid schemes in disguise.' At the same time, American trade regulators, without the slightest concern for the extensive damage they themselves have caused and are still causing, have continued bleating the Big 'MLM' Lie, by insisting that 'MLM is a viable and legal branch of the direct selling industry.' Yet no one at the FTC has ever seen a shred of quantifiable evidence proving that this ridiculous adult fairy story can be true. In fact, when asked in the most specific of terms, if they have ever seen such evidence, like income-tax payment receipts, it has been impossible to get any meaningful, let alone the only truthful, answer to this simple question. Another highly revealing question that FTC types have obviously shied away from answering, is: what would be your own reaction if a vulnerable individual you care about suddenly underwent a radical personality transformation, and declared that he/she had signed up for a so-called 'MLM income opportunity?'

Thus, in respect of their Orwellian refusal to tell the truth publicly, and identify the Big 'MLM' Lie, Robert FitzPatrick has compared the inflexible behaviour of FTC officials, and their advisers, to a body of humourless scientists who have been paid to investigate the manifestly preposterous claim that 'pigs might fly,' but after decades of examining an assortment of pigs with no wings, they still insist on continuing their futile, but financially-profitable, quest whilst systematically refusing to accept even the suggestion that there can be no such creature.

Obviously, with Trump currently sat in the Oval Office, the chances of any gang of 'MLM' cultic racketeers being held fully to account in the USA are effectively zero. However, that has been the shameful situation in the 'home of the brave and the land of the free' since 1979.

David Brear (copyright 2025)