Whilst law enforcement has done effectively nothing to identify the true nature of, let alone stop, the problem, there are hundreds of apparently independent blame-the-victim 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM' cults operating in the world today. In reality, they have been the constituent parts of one phenomenon. For all them have been luring an endless-chain of ill-informed individuals into temporary de facto slavery by maintaining an absolute monopoly of information, in order to peddle bedazzling variations of essentially the same, self-perpetuating Big Lie. Conservative estimates are that, each decade, the overall number of ill-informed adherents being churned through this reality-controlling labyrinth of blame-the-victim cultic rackets, is counted in hundreds of millions. 'MLM' groups have become by far the most contagious, extensive, widely-copied and profitable evolution of the criminogenic cult phenomenon in the modern era. This shocking description, even though it is backed up by all independent evidence and is surely accurate, still remains unthinkable to most people.
David Brear (copyright 2025)
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Quiz: How Many MLMs Are There? | Pyramid Scheme Alert
Clue: You Don’t Have to Count
No one has verifiable and current data on the total number of multi-level marketing (MLM) companies in the USA or globally. Wikipedia cites sources for “over 1,000” MLMs in the USA alone. The website MLMTruth has attempted to document current and defunct MLMs in the USA, organizing them alphabetically. Counting just from A-D, 163 enterprises are listed. The USA is only 20% of the global MLM “market”!
As MLMs can’t be reliably counted, they cannot be accurately measured either. No government agency or economic body monitors the scale of MLM. “Annual sales” and number of “distributors” are whatever the MLMs say. The largest MLM in the world is commonly thought to be Amway, but Amway is actually dwarfed by the Chinese MLM, Tiens, that claims 14 million “distributors” in over 120 countries. Coincidentally, Tiens was launched in China the same year, 1995, that Amway starting operating in that country.
MLM “revenue” is only one measure of consumer damage. Costs for seminars, travel, hotels, coaching, “training,” entertainment, and “motivation” are additional costs. To these must be added lost opportunity costs – displaced productive work and education – and then there is the debt incurred. No one has ever calculated total financial losses. Social harm is immeasurable.
My colleague, the late Jon M. Taylor, and I estimated that between us we personally examined more than 500 MLMs, each one prompted by a consumer request or complaint, a journalist inquiry, a lawsuit or a prosecution over a number of years. I decoded MLM’s “income disclosures” to show that 50%-80% of total MLM payouts on all “sales” transactions (disguised as “commissions and bonuses”) are directly transferred to the top 1%. Jon Taylor waded into MLM “average income” data and factored associated costs and required purchases (which he knew of from personal experience in MLM) to reveal that 99% of all MLM recruits lose money. We also examined “qualification” rules and policies that define MLM as a closed, rigged and price-fixed “market.”
This painstaking and frustrating endeavor led to documenting the 4 operational characteristics we observed in each and every MLM we researched: (1) “endless” recruiting chain structure (2) pay-to-play requirements, up front and monthly (3) mandated recruiting to gain promised rewards, and (4) a “compensation” formula of extreme internal money transfer from “last ones in” to earlier ones “at the top.”
Of course, we saw that these are precisely the characteristics of a classic pyramid scheme. This answered the two questions we were both most often asked, “What about this MLM?” and, Are all MLMs pyramid schemes?” Once the MLM/pyramid characteristics are identified in the enterprise, (which takes about 5 minutes) the first question is answered by the second one.
These facts led us to the obvious and inescapable conclusion that MLMs are not “businesses.” Nowhere in the world is a pyramid scheme, which is inherently deceptive, harmful, and unsustainable, treated as a legitimate business enterprise. Nowhere in the world is a 99% “failure” rate called a “business opportunity.”
Finally, the Answer to “How Many MLMs?”
From these realizations, and from hearing the same pitiable accounts all over the world, year after year, I finally arrived at the true and current number of MLMs in the world. The number is one (1).
The pretense and the illusion of “multiple” MLMs is part of the scam. It is another element of disguise, like the overpriced products, phony “rank” titles, calling purchases by recruits “sales”, manipulated “income disclosures”, and the cruel promise of success to those who “believe” and “trust the system.”
The perception that there are multiple MLMs, each independent and distinct, and that they must, therefore, be examined one at a time, as Jon and I spent years doing, is, arguably, MLM’s most effective disguise for entrapping consumers and evading law enforcement.
By appearing as many “different” companies, MLM can better scam more people in more places and spread more rapidly. It can defraud the same people in the same way, over and over. I have met people who were in as many as 12 “different” MLMs, losing in each, of course, and are still searching. MLM victims are led to believe their MLM is unlike all others.
Working “on a case by case basis,” the FTC and other law enforcement can waste years to prove that one MLM, and only one, is a pyramid scheme. Their case is subverted and rendered pointless by their own policy that all the identical MLMs are presumed “legitimate.”
In reality, all MLMs are just elements of one and the same cultic racket, one monster, many heads, like the Hydra. Failed or closed MLMs regenerate, like Hydra’s heads. Top recruiters migrate their downlines to another MLM or start a new MLM. MLM “owners” pop up over and over, under new “company” names.
“Multiple” MLMs should all be seen as appendages – grotesque heads – of the original MLM monster, Nutrilite, hatched in 1945. Every MLM on earth is an extension of the Nutrilite beast. Amway was an early new head. Tiens in China is a later one; same creature, more heads speaking new languages. Each new “owner” that defected from one MLM to launch a “new” one understood that the only way to get to the top of MLM is to start there.
“New” MLMs are what Jon Taylor called “re-pyramiding”. All pyramids tell the latest recruits at the dead bottom of the chain that they are the top of their own “endless” chain. “Re-pyramiding” is based on the same lie. It is a trick of the insiders. It continues the recruiting as before, but restarts the rigged pay formula, leapfrogging the “founders” to where most of the money flows. All MLMs are genetically identical, the same monster scam.
As I documented in Ponzinomics, Nutrilite’s infamous adoption of its pyramid recruiting “plan” (later called “MLM”), was specifically concocted as a scam on the millions seeking work after World War II. It was never an adaptation of direct selling. The commodities to be bought and sold were the recruited salespeople. A viral fraud of this scale required nothing less than Big Lie propaganda to spread, and cultic mental enslavement to control victims and to cover up its trail of destruction.
Multiple MLMs, Multiple Delusions
When I first began exposing MLMs, there was already a strong base of “anti-Amway” activists, some of whom had endured years of mental enslavement and financial loss. Many could not imagine that all other MLMs were also brainwashing, gaslighting, deceiving and inflicting the same loss rates. Pyramid Scheme Alert was the first educational website focused on MLM overall, treating all MLM as pyramids.
Today, there are many more camps of anti-MLM activists organized around opposition to one MLM or another, like the first ones against Amway were. Some focus on individual MLMs as a gateway to explaining the overall fraud of MLM. But others ignore or reject any critique of other MLMs or “MLM” overall, just as some of the anti-Amway activists did decades ago.
Accepting “multiple” MLMs leads to evaluating the fake MLM “industry” data. One academic compares MLM’s fake “retail sales” data to the authentic retail sales figures of real businesses online and brick-and-mortar. The “comparison” is supposed to measure if the MLM “sales model” is competitive in the general economy. That is like measuring and comparing counterfeit currency against real dollars, since both facilitate financial transactions.
Tide is Turning, Slowly
According to MLM’s own data, between 2020 and 2024, total revenue in the USA, adjusted for inflation, declined 24.5%. (Note: the published dollar amounts are not valid since they are based on projected, imaginary “retail” sales. The yearly differences, however, are usable. The inflation calculation converts the 2020 and 2024 figures into 2025 dollars, for a valid comparison).
Another measure of change is the value of the larger MLMs traded on Wall Street. These formerly high flying stocks have dropped like rocks in the last 5 years. Herbalife is down 80%. Nuskin dropped 78%. Medifast declined 90%, and Usana 55%. Tupperware went bankrupt. Avon was broken up and sold off to MLMs in Asia and Latin America.
However, at the same time, the US and global economy is pushing millions more people into financial insecurity, making them more vulnerable to MLM’s Big Lie of “extra” or “extraordinary” income. And, though the reputation of MLM has turned more negative, the many-headed monster is still described – by major institutions and even by many in “anti-MLM” – as an “industry” of independent “sales” companies, each one “different.”
With the disguise of multiple sales companies still protecting MLM, many powerful truths about MLM that are now being publicized are weakened. Millions more people who otherwise would be properly forewarned are falling victim. The beneficial change that the truth will bring is slowed.
Robert L. FitzPatrick (copyright 2025)
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The Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie.
Introduction
How can a pile of money be made from a financially
suicidal ‘business model’ that has been deliberately rigged to fail?
In 1967, an American satirical movie offered a memorable
answer to this conundrum. I am of course referring to ‘The Producers,’ written
and directed by Mel Brooks.
Whilst this movie went over the heads of certain
humourless critics who described it as, ‘controversial,’ in 1968, it won its
author an Academy Award for best original screenplay. Indeed by 1996, ‘The
Producers’ had long-since achieved a cult status and was deemed to be of such ‘cultural,
historic and aesthetic significance,’ that it was selected by the Library of
Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry. For Mel
Brooks’ had presented the world with a classic comedy double act - Max
Bialystock, an outrageous caricature of a once successful, but now failing, New
York Jewish theatrical producer (evidently suffering from Narcissistic Personality
Disorder) played by Zero Mostel, and Leo Bloom, a deeply insecure Jewish
accountant (evidently suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder) played by Gene
Wilder. In the movie, this pair of physically and psychologically opposite
characters come together and perpetrate an absurd swindle - identified by the
accountant and peddled by the producer. By first building a bedazzling utopian fantasy
of future prosperity and freedom in his mind, Bialystock
overwhelms an initially reluctant Bloom, and persuades him to become his
partner in crime. He then sets to work seducing a flock of wealthy, but lonely
and vulnerable, old ladies. One by one, Bialystock persuades them to buy a
total of 25 000% of the projected profits from, what he assures them will
be, a sure-fire hit stage musical which he and Bloom are producing on
Broadway. However, he doesn’t tell them that the show has been written by a deranged
devotee of Adolf Hitler, Franz Liebkind, or that it will venerate the ‘führer’
and the ‘Nazis.’ For the show, ‘Springtime for Hitler,’ has
been carefully selected by its producers with the hidden motive of offending a
sophisticated New York theatre audience to such an extent, that it will be doomed
to close after just one disastrous performance. Just to make certain that it
will immediately bomb, Bialystock and Bloom recruit an aggressively kitsch transvestite,
Roger DeBris, to direct the show, and they find a drug-fuelled pacifist-hippie,
Lorenzo Saint DuBois (LSD), to play
Hitler. On opening night, Bialystock even makes an enemy of the New York Times
theatre critic, by offering him a bribe.
The devious plan being that, seeing as ‘Springtime for
Hitler’ has cost Bialystock and Bloom only a mere fraction of their available
financing to stage, when inevitably it sinks without a trace, the Internal Revenue
Service will have no reason to investigate Bloom’s fraudulent declaration that no
profit was made. Moreover, the old ladies who collectively have vastly
over-financed the show, will believe that they simply made a bad investment.
As ill-informed and isolated individuals, they too will have no reason to
suspect fraud. Thus, Bialystock and Bloom will be able quietly to keep
the large pile of excess finance. However, when despite all their sabotage efforts,
‘Springtime for Hitler’ turns out to be a smash hit predicted to ‘run
and run,’ the producers along with the show’s author wind up behind bars. They
are ultimately seen duplicating the same fraud on their fellow inmates and the prison
warden, with Bialystock and Liebkind directing rehearsals and Bloom
over-selling shares in their latest sure-fire hit production, ‘Prisoners
of Love.’
Now most people would automatically assume that, in the
real world, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to perpetrate essentially the same absurdly
obvious swindle, albeit hidden behind an a far more complex and confusing ‘sure
fire business model,’ but again one deliberately rigged to fail. A swindle not
just based on essentially the same one-off, financially suicidal modus operandi
as described above, but now expanded and duplicated on an industrial scale and
baited to keep ensnaring a much wider range of ill-informed individuals. Indeed,
to the average person, the idea that numerous gangs of copycat charlatans have
been allowed to keep peddling the same insidious game of commercial make-believe
as reality, steadily exploiting, isolating and silencing many millions of
losing investors around the world over a period spanning several decades, and thereby
get away with stealing a veritable mountain of money, would seem to be beyond
the bounds of possibility. However, it should be remembered that the best way of
hiding something, is to place it in plain sight and make as big as you possibly
can.
Thus, I managed to live more than three decades
without ever hearing the made-up impressive-sounding phrase, 'Multi-Level
Marketing,’ or its catchy abbreviation, ‘MLM.’ Today, I wish this contagious
nonsense had never entered my life, but unfortunately, I had no choice in the
matter. Whilst reading the history of my own nightmare encounter with the
original 'MLM commercial' cult known as 'Amway' (corruption of 'The
American Way'), bear in mind that, when these disturbing events first started
to unfold, I had no idea of the level of danger my family was in, or of the
true nature, extent and power of the phenomenon I was confronted with. As yet,
there was no full explanation of 'MLM commercial' cultism readily available.
That's why I began the thankless task of compiling one as long ago the late
1990s. However, at that time, I was still trying to find the right words to
identify it accurately. Even when I did find the right words, I discovered that
the ugly, but ultimately absurd, truth about the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon was still unthinkable to most people. The truth being that what has
become commonly referred to as, 'the MLM business model,' has been
nothing more than a classic example of the notorious, reality-controlling,
totalitarian propaganda tactic known as the 'Big Lie.' That is to say, the
spreading of a falsehood which is so colossal and outrageous that the average
person cannot even begin to conceive that anyone would have the audacity to
invent it. Indeed, when I first began to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie,
I was faced with the daunting situation where it had been repeated, largely unchallenged,
so often and for so many years, that a remarkable number of apparently
sophisticated and rational people had come to accept it as the truth.
The situation is still daunting, but lately it has begun
to change in that, mainly due to the Internet, an increasing number of
courageous 'MLM commercial' cult survivors have found accurate information,
as well as mutual support, enabling them to come forward and describe their
essentially identical experiences. Also, whereas in the past many 'MLM' converts
were men, who naturally found it hard to admit to the world that they'd been
duped, lately the majority of persons being lured into, and exploited by, these
pernicious groups, have been women. Furthermore, 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 all endless-chain recruitment frauds, previously labelled as,
'pyramid selling schemes.' For, even though it had been under investigation for
years and was facing civil prosecution, these senior officials eventually 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 rather than face
certain impeachment. 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 chronic
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' cultic 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 contractors.
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 'Multi-Level
Marketing 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 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, it goes without saying that American trade
regulators and their academic advisers, have never been able to come up with 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 thing as ‘a viable and legal MLM direct selling income
opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of smug 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 entirely 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 motivated by the false expectation of a
future reward).
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, response 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 attitude 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 wingless pigs, they still insist on continuing their futile, but
financially-profitable, quest whilst systematically refusing to consider even
the suggestion that there can be no such mythical creature.
At this point, I should perhaps point out that, although
I am an 'MLM commercial' cult survivor, I was never an adherent of one
of these pernicious groups. Unfortunately, I found myself shackled financially to
a person, my only brother, who at a time of vulnerability, had fallen
completely under the spell of the Big 'MLM' Lie. Again, when these disturbing
events started to unfold, I did not fully understand that my brother was ideal prey
to be lured and defrauded, then used as bedazzled-bait to lure and defraud
others; all for the benefit of a little gang of sanctimonious American
billionaire-charlatans posing as 'Compassionate Capitalists,' and whom
he had never met. Yet classically, my brother was an ideal subject to be
deceived, for the simple reason that he was completely convinced that he was
far too smart to be deceived. Thus, once enslaved inside the ‘MLM’
trap, the most powerful weapon in the hands of the criminals exploiting him,
was my brother’s own mind. However, initially I failed to grasp just how
dangerously deluded and devious, chronic 'MLM commercial' cult adherents
can be. That said, like many people whom they approach, I immediately realised
that they are living in a parallel reality - completely obsessed with trying to
recruit you into what is quite clearly a dumb pyramid scheme, but which they
insist is 'part of the legal MLM direct selling industry and definitely not
a pyramid scheme.' What took me much longer to fathom, is that core-'MLM
commercial' cult adherents are also living by a parallel, and perverted,
code of morality. Their destructive behaviour is controlled by the
self-righteous guided-delusion that, by recruiting you, and even by lying to
you, they are ultimately helping both themselves and you to achieve future
redemption in a secure utopian existence - a form of Capitalist Paradise on Earth
- where no one has a job, but everyone is his/her ‘own boss’ - a happy,
healthy, prosperous and free 'MLM business owner.'
Thus, it should always be remembered that chronic 'MLM'
adherents' belief can be quite genuine, but what they believe in, and have
bought into body and soul, is a colossal and bedazzling fake. The irony of all
this being, that the Big 'MLM' Lie has continued to thrive, because its most-fanatical
adherents have been tricked into wasting their own time and money spreading it
and hiding the truth about it, combined with law enforcement agents' and
legislators' chronic, and catastrophic, failure to identify it accurately. Although
they have no idea what they are really involved in, active 'MLM' adherents
are, in fact, proselytising-evangelists for a camouflaged, non-rational, ritual
belief system (call it a 'perverted religion' if you like) which has been
maliciously designed not only to spread like a contagion - enticing, deceiving,
robbing, exploiting and abusing susceptible individuals and their friends and
families - but also to load its victims with shame and guilt for their
inevitable failure to succeed, and thus, prevent them from facing reality and
complaining. Consequently, whilst they remain under the control of the Big 'MLM'
Lie, its most-dangerous adherents should be seen for what they
really are - the deluded deployable agents of a de facto syndicate comprising
the bosses of some the most widespread, socially, psychologically and
financially destructive organized cultic crime groups to have emerged in recent
history.
David Brear (copyright 2025)
