In 1997, I obtained a video tape containing two French network television programmes broadcast during 1995. As I watched these, everything I’d experienced with my 'Amway' controlled family in Yorkshire suddenly began to make far more sense. However, by the end of the tape, loud alarm bells were ringing in my head, and I had begun to feel sick in the pit of my stomach. For these were fly-on-the-wall documentary investigations of a now bankrupt, French-registered, so-called 'MLM/direct selling' company known as 'GEPM' or ‘le Groupement’ (‘le Groupement Européen des Professionnels du Marketing/ The European Group of Marketing Professionals).’ By coincidence, the offices and warehousing of this company had been less than forty miles from my home in Normandy, and recruitment had been rife in the region. Subsequently, I obtained a folder of further press coverage along with some victim statements with the names and contact details redacted. This information had been put together by an independent French consumer protection association, the ‘Women’s Social and Civic Union (UFCS),’ and an independent French cult advice association, the ‘National Union of Associations for the Defence of the Family and Individuals (UNADFI).’ Included in this material, was a copy of page from a recent French ‘Parliamentary Commission Report’ compiled by independent French academics. They had classified ‘le Groupment’ as a ‘deviant evangelical cult,’ and watching the documentaries, it was obvious why they had formed that conclusion. Sadly, whilst this story had continued making headlines in the French media (which I then didn’t follow), it hadn’t drawn the attention of UK journalists. Also, this was almost ten years before the launch of any English language, French News channel, and although the Internet was rapidly developing, I didn’t yet have access to it.
The ostensible boss of 'le Groupement' had been Jean Tadeusz Godzich, a smooth-talking, but rough-looking, middle-aged Franco-American of Polish extraction. With twelve of his associates, derided in media articles as his ‘apostles’ and ‘disciples’, Godzich was facing criminal charges for running a pyramid scheme, but he had escaped to the USA.
Yet throughout the 1980s, he had been an 'Amway Diamond Distributor.’ As such, he had been prominently featured in the French subsidiary’s version of ‘Amagram,’ as an exemplary ‘Independent Business Owner, Network Leader and Top Earner.’ Only when French journalists started to look behind ‘Amway’s’ nonspecific, jargon-laced ‘commercial’ cover story, was Godzich suddenly, and very publicly, air-brushed out of it. Various articles had appeared quoting distressed individuals who had lost significant amounts of money, and who were complaining that ‘Amway’ was ‘a scam employing cult-like techniques.’ One of these former so-called ‘distributors’ described how he’d been assaulted and thrown out an ‘Amway’ meeting, for trying to speak out. Yet, according to statements issued by ‘Amway France,’ Godzich’s spectacular fall from grace and expulsion was because he’d ‘broken the company’s Code of Ethics.’ However, during 1987, Godzich and his wife had been busy registering various new French and Belgian companies, legally independent of ‘Amway.’
Thus, in 1988, Godzich simply announced to around eight thousand French and Belgian citizens who formed his ‘downline,' that they were ‘no longer Amway distributors…' Henceforth, they would be under contract to ‘le Groupement.' In this way, French media attention had been diverted away from ‘Amway,’ just by creating a corporate copycat of it. Apart from the name hung over the entrance, the so-called ‘Multi-Level Marketing income/business opportunity’ being peddled by this French ‘Amway’ scapegoat, was essentially identical in every way to the ‘Amway’ original. Indeed, it even looked as if the products were being re-labelled.
For the first time, I
was able to watch interviews with recovering ‘MLM commercial’ cult survivors.
However, it was immediately evident that their thinking remained largely controlled
by the endless flow of ‘business’ jargon that had been constantly pumped
into their brains. Whilst these people described themselves as having been ‘distributors
and independent business owners,’ they now openly confessed to being
destitute and dissociated from their previous relationships, but they didn’t
have the words to identify what they had really been subjected to. I was later
to discover that mental confusion is one of the severe psychological problems
which cult survivors typically can suffer from. Nonetheless, it was clear that
these people had all thrown away chunks of their lives, and the equivalent of
tens of thousands of dollars, in the deluded belief that ‘by developing a
totally 100% positive mindset,’ and ‘regularly buying a quota of products and/or
services, whilst recruiting others to do exactly the same, etc. ad infinitum,’
they were ‘duplicating a proven, risk free, business-building plan which,
after just a few years of committed effort, could enable ordinary people to quit
their jobs and fulfil their wildest dreams.’
One young woman broke
down and wept on camera. She and her husband had trusted Godzich, and his
associates, to the extent that they had been recklessly attempting to ‘duplicate
the plan’ to the point of bankruptcy and emotional and physical exhaustion.
Only after several years, when they literally couldn’t afford to continue, had
these adults finally begun to realize that, like dependent children in an
abusive family, every aspect of their lives had become controlled: what they
ate and drank, the hours they slept, the clothes they wore, the information
they received, the people they frequented, etc. etc. They were still struggling
to understand that behind its impenetrable shield of mind-numbing, mathematical
and linguistic hocus-pocus, the so-called ‘plan’ was a dangerous fake which
had turned them into dangerous fakes, because they’d not been in business at
all. Indeed, they’d had zero chance of ever establishing a viable business. Yet
previously, they’d been conditioned to shut all ‘negative thinking and
people’ out of their lives and even to neglect the welfare of
their own children, whilst being constantly indoctrinated to believe that they
were ‘acting in the long-term interests of their family.’ Thus, they had
been loaded with shame and guilt and coerced into continuing no matter what the
cost. For in this controlled, poisoned state of mind, ‘quitting’ meant
that they didn’t love their children sufficiently. This courageous
survivor concluded her interview by warning viewers that ‘le Groupement
is not a cult, it’s something far worse than a cult.’ In a studio
discussion which followed one of the documentaries, a young journalist who had
conducted the interviews, observed that ‘adherence to le Groupement can
be compared to a gambling addiction.’
Examining this sickening
evidence, but without being directly involved, I was suddenly able to see
clearly what these ‘MLM’ survivors had all fallen for. Namely, an
updated version of the ‘Faustian Bargain’ - a devilish trick that has evidently
been played on susceptible people for centuries. For bedazzled by a glittering illusion
of limitless prosperity, freedom and happiness, but unable to identify it
as a trap constructed with their own money, these individuals had quite
literally made a pact with a gang of charlatans posing as honest saviours. At
times of vulnerability, they had signed over their souls in fraudulent, reality-controlling
contracts specifically designed to convince them that they were ‘Independent
Business Owners’ making a free choice, when really, they were powerless slaves,
albeit without physical chains, but nonetheless condemned to be exploited by all-powerful
masters. Tragically, in order to face reality, these survivors now had to think
the unthinkable, that they had been unwitting bait themselves. For they’d been indoctrinated
to lie and pretend to be ‘successful,’ in order to attract further potential
slaves into the same trap. Yet they had been completely convinced that this was
entirely moral behaviour, because in the end, they were ‘helping people
to achieve their dream of financial freedom by recruiting them.’ Thus, I
was watching the victims of a truly evil fraud, maliciously designed to spread
like a contagion and render those infected by it, incapable of thinking
critically. Finally, I could see how the full truth lurking behind the ‘MLM’
lie, was not only beyond the understanding of current victims and recovering survivors,
but it was also a threat to their self-esteem and related psychological
function. Indeed, ignoring the various, kitsch contemporary labels, the
appropriate warning that should really have been hung over the entrance to this
type of contagious cultic racket, was:
‘Abandon hope all ye who
enter here.’
Subsequently, I was amazed
to learn that between 1988 and 1995, at least three hundred thousand French and
Belgian citizens were known to have been lured into, and gradually churned
through, the insolvent ranks of 'le Groupement.’ Yet Godzich’s
propaganda had been boasting that his company had ‘created eighty
thousand direct selling businesses.’ Behind this nonspecific narrative, the
average churn rate of so-called ‘independent businesses owners’ had been
more than 50% per year. This meant that the overall churn rate had been rising
exponentially, year on year, to a level where it would become effectively 100%.
Since most adherents had been recruited by a friend or relative, and in turn
they had tried to recruit other friends and relatives, this automatically
incriminated, and/or embarrassed, everyone involved. Again, making the truth
very painful to face. Thus, when questioned, former adherents tended to try to
justify their previous behaviour by making the vague claim that they had ‘made
some money in le Groupement.’ Yet, investigating journalists had been
unable to trace a shred of real evidence proving that any of these so-called ‘business
owners’ had made so much as one centime of overall net-income after
the deduction of all start up and operating costs. Ironically, the truth had
been hidden in plain sight in the nonspecific ‘MLM’ propaganda, because Godzich,
and his associates, had been peddling an ‘income opportunity,’ but just
like the authors of the original, nonspecific ‘Amway’ narrative, they never
claimed that this was a net-income opportunity. However, whilst the
majority of insolvent adherents had abandoned the hopeless task of trying to ‘duplicate’
the financially suicidal so-called ‘plan’ after no more than a year
or two, and wasted a relatively small amount of money, a core-group (around 5%),
who had access to independent funds and/or credit, had been able to persist as deluded
de facto slave recruiters for extended periods. Obviously, the longer they
persisted, the more money they were compelled to lose, but the more difficult
it then became to write off what they’d been led to believe would eventually
pay out as an ‘endlessly profitable investment,’ and quit. This being the
classic closed-logic mindset of chronic gambling addicts.
In return for banal, cheaply-procured
commodities, but priced at a level which made them effectively unsaleable on
the open market (to persons with fully functioning critical and evaluative faculties),
over several years, the equivalent of around 100 million $ of unlawful, losing investment
payments, had been handed to Godzich’s main front-company by the never-ending
chain comprising hundreds of thousands of temporary, unwitting victims of the ‘MLM’
contagion. Again, copying ‘Amway,’ Godzich had made sure that the French
government was complicit. His front company had been collecting and paying ‘Value
Added (sales) Tax’ on these unlawful internal transactions making them appear to
be lawful external transactions. Consequently, since government officials had
remained conveniently deaf, dumb and blind as to how this abusive swindle
functioned, during these same years, and with the unwitting paid compliance of accountants,
Godzich and his criminal associates had been allowed to get away with laundering
a growing mountain of stolen money as ‘retail sales’ based on value and
demand. Laughably, the fact that the French authorities had done nothing to
stop it, had made it appear that ‘le Groupement’ couldn’t possibly be a
fraud. However, at the same time, an even greater mountain of cash had been
gradually thieved by Godzich, and his criminal associates, who had been hiding
the true results of their centrally controlled rigged market, and peddling
their insolvent victims the so-called ‘plan to achieve total financial
freedom.’ This was contained in an endless supply of French translations of
the same, American, quasi-religious, pseudo-psychological publications that my
brother had been obediently buying and absorbing, along with recordings and
tickets to meetings. Indeed, many of the materials preaching, and reinforcing,
the pernicious blame-the-victim ‘MLM’ fairy story were produced in North
America (Quebec) not in France.
The most profitable ‘le
Groupement’ events, known as ‘Dream Weekends,’ were held at regular
intervals throughout the year, mirroring religious festivals. These took place in
some of France’s largest indoor arenas holding up to twenty thousand people,
and they’d easily been sold out in the weeks leading up to them. To get a front-row
seat, long queues of excited, would-be ‘MLM millionaire’ couples had formed
early in the morning. Yet, each one of these events was merely an endless repetition
of essentially the same ritual performance, in which everyone was obliged to dress
up as ‘clean cut, successful business owners’ and play a ‘positive’
role. Again, the format had obviously been copied scene by scene, and word for
word, from the ‘Amway’ original. These carefully stage-managed events
lasted all day and into the early hours of the following day. Adherents were
indoctrinated to attend and remain to the end, partly to demonstrate their ‘100%
commitment to the plan,’ but also for fear of missing out on learning
every ‘secret of success.’ Many in the congregation became so emotionally overwhelmed
and then physically exhausted, that eventually they found it difficult to remain
awake. The opening of these events resembled a hybrid of a major rock concert
and extremist political rally, but gradually they became like an American ‘megachurch
revivalist’ meeting. Tickets to Godzich’s marathon, ritual orgies of
deluded self-gratification had cost the equivalent of a minimum of $200 each. In
this way, he had regularly stolen millions of dollars, but again Godzich had
made sure that the French government was complicit, by collecting and paying ‘Value
Added Tax’ on these fraudulent transactions. Participation had also required
considerable travel and hotel expenses, upon which Godzich, his associates were
also taking their cut.
The journalists had been
able to infiltrate ‘Dream Weekends’ with hidden cameras, and they had
filmed Godzich strutting his stuff on stage being revered and worshipped, eventually
leading his most deluded followers in ‘prayers’ and invoking ‘God.’ Essentially,
just as he’d perfected over the years as a star performer for ‘Amway,’ Godzich
was again preaching the gospel of ‘MLM’ salvation, and pretending to be
an exemplary ‘millionaire Diamond Distributor’ with access to a secret
knowledge (the ‘plan’) that had enabled him to transform from an ordinary poor human
into a fabulously happy, healthy, wealthy and free superhuman. He was
further pretending to be such a pious and compassionate Christian capitalist
and philanthropist, that he was prepared to share this secret life-transforming
knowledge with anyone. Faced with the overwhelming pressure of the group, no
individual participant dared to stand alone and challenge their selfless,
well-rehearsed guru’s ‘positive’ message. Indeed, anyone trying to do so
would have been immediately shouted down as a ‘whining negative,’ physically
expelled or even assaulted. At the height of the frenzy, robotic, smartly
dressed and smiling couples had been presented on stage receiving their ultimately
meaningless ‘promotions’ in rank in the form of shiny lapel pins, along
with corresponding, net-loss ‘commission payments’ in the form of
out-sized cardboard cheques. As the motivational rock music swelled and cameras
flashed, the bedazzled congregation had risen to its feet as one, ecstatically cheering,
chanting slogans condemning the traditional world of employment and applauding
wildly. This was apparent proof that ‘MLM’ can bring anyone ‘success.’ These
insolvent ‘MLM’ evangelists, whose grinning portraits would now also
appear in the latest issue of an ‘Amway’ copycat propaganda magazine,
raised their arms in triumph as they accepted the plaudits of the crowd.
Finally taking to the microphone, they individually recited their fake rags
to riches personal ‘success’ stories. Some broke down and wept tears
of joy. Essentially, they were all testifying to how aimless and hard their
lives had once been, trapped like rats on a 40-year treadmill of working for a
boss, with only retirement, a meagre pension and eventually sickness and death
to look forward to. After painting this picture of Hell on Earth,
they then proudly boasted of the fabulous financial and personal benefits
that ‘exact duplication of the plan’ had quickly brought them. Yet outside
these venues, when politely asked to explain exactly how much they’d really been
earning in the ‘MLM’ Paradise on Earth (after the deduction of
all their real-world costs), these same Jackpot Witnesses became
child-like and evasive. An echelon of shadowy figures in dark suits hovered
behind them, shepherding them away, warning them not to speak to any ‘negative
critics.’ In the controlled, poisoned minds of core-adherents, these
journalists were ‘evil socialists and anti-capitalists… Jealous haters and
losers who couldn’t understand Multi-Level Marketing.’
The documentaries began to reveal that most of the proceeds from the ‘le Groupement’ racket had been quietly exported out of France by Godzich and his associates via a labyrinth of legally ‘independent,’ but actually wholly interdependent, privately-owned companies. His principal partner in crime had been an American ‘millionaire Amway Diamond,’ Pastor Doug Wead, with whom Godzich shared offices in the USA. In turn, Wead had been associated with ‘Amway’s Top Earner,’ Dexter Yager (the big boss of my brother’s ‘International Business Systems network’). Wead, a large, loud, physically and psychologically intimidating character, had been a regular star turn at the so-called ‘Dream Weekends.’ Unlike Godzich, he couldn’t speak French, so he had performed his authoritarian act alongside an unwitting simultaneous translator.
To make it appear that this couldn’t possibly be a fraud, Wead and Godzich had also paid an influential American celebrity to come to France and give media interviews and make personal appearances at the same events. With his innocent-looking wife at his side, this particularly useful idiot had been enthusiastically endorsing the company and praising its apparent ethos of ‘Christian-inspired free-market capitalism and the American Dream.’ The influential celebrity being Niel Bush - son of the ex-CIA Director and (then) US president, George Bush, and younger brother of (future) US president, George W. Bush. However, I later discovered that Doug Wead’s connections with the Bush family were far more extensive and sinister than first appeared.
Godzich had continued to
hide his crimes in plain sight by using 25 million francs ($3.7 million) of his
ill-gotten gains to sponsor a professional road race cycling team and employ a
former world cycling champion, Luc Leblanc, as its leader. He’d also let it be known
to the press that he’d given piles of (stolen) money to some of France’s most
high-profile charities and that he had financed ‘a foundation to offer
support to recovering drug addicts.’ Although Godzich never seems to have
tried to spread his racket into the UK, he had obtained association with one of
Britain’s major insurance companies. Unqualified ‘le Groupement’
adherents had been acting as agents for ‘Norwich Union’ and this famous
company’s name was prominently featured in Godzich’s propaganda.
Thus, by maintaining an
absolute monopoly of information (i.e. withholding all the evidence of built-in
universal failure and constantly reciting the nonspecific Big ‘MLM income
opportunity’ Lie), right under the noses of the French and Belgian
authorities, Godzich and his criminal associates had been able to keep their
profitable racket functioning for several years. At the same time, hundreds of
thousands of French and Belgian citizens had been subjected to identifiable, coordinated,
devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion, without
their fully informed consent. These techniques were not only designed to relieve
victims of their time and money, but also to shut down their critical and
evaluative faculties, transforming them into unquestioning pawns in a grotesque,
pay-to-play, self-perpetuating game of ‘commercial’ make-believe. In
this way, the significant minority of chronic adherents had been programmed to
ignore all suffering, to keep signing their annual contracts and committing all
their assets (mental, physical, social and financial) to the ‘exact duplication
of the plan.’ Simultaneously, they had been led to believe that only
pathetic losers, and negative thinkers, quit and blame others for their own
failure to succeed. This particularly evil chapter of the pernicious ‘MLM’
fairy story was again designed to load victims with shame and guilt, and thus, further
prevent them from facing reality. However, to this day (and for obvious reasons)
no intellectually rigorous official criminal inquiry, let alone a prosecution,
has ever been pursued in France concerning the ‘Amway’ copycat, blame-the-victim
cultic racket that had been lurking behind 'le Groupement.'
By the beginning of
1994, finding fresh unwitting recruits to keep replenishing the ever-shifting,
insolvent ranks of ‘le Groupement’ was becoming increasingly difficult due
to widespread independent French media exposure. Meanwhile, the gradual
destruction of Godzich’s once-absolute monopoly of information had led to over
one thousand complaints and enquiries being made to the ‘Women’s Social and
Civic Union (UFCS),’ and the ‘National Union of Associations for the Defence of
the Family and Individuals (UNADFI).’ A criminal complaint, containing
confused, jargon-laced victims’ statements was now filed by attorneys acting
for UFCS. Simply because of accurate information becoming freely available, the
racket began to implode, and with only around twelve hundred fanatical core-adherents
remaining, the main front company was forced into bankruptcy and compulsorily
closed in 1995. However, ‘Le Groupement’ had already had its name legally
changed to ‘Cedipac.’ This dodge came when the media reported that
gendarmes had raided the company’s offices in the village of Fleury-sur-Andelle
near to the city of Rouen, as part of a fraud investigation. The former
Chairman of ‘le Groupement,’ Lionel Charles, was now the Managing
Director, and he was subsequently one of those placed under investigation and
charged, but only with running a pyramid scheme. Meanwhile, although officially
Godzich was also under investigation, he was already in the USA along with the
bulk of the stolen cash. At this time, the French authorities couldn’t touch
him, and they had no jurisdiction over his American associates like Doug Wead.
Previously, in November
1994, around one thousand five hundred of the most chronically bedazzled of
Godzich’s remaining flock of de facto slaves, along with some unwitting salaried
employees of the main front company, had descended on UNADFI's office in
20th Arrondissement of Paris. According to a 1996 book, ‘La Mafia des Sectes,’
by a journalist specializing in the cult phenomenon, Bruno Fouchereau, this ‘commando
attack’ was organized and led by a close associate of Godzich, Michel Labasor,
whose links to Jean Marie Le Pen’s ‘National Front’ dated all the
way back to his days in university with Le Pen’s daughter, Marine. When the
attack kicked off, the UNADFI volunteers had managed to raise the alarm. Three
police officers had immediately been sent to the scene. Although this was an
‘unauthorized and unlawful protest,’ the officers stood and watched and did not
try to intervene. According to Fouchereau’s account, the three officers then ‘received
orders from the Prefecture to leave.’ Yet all that UNADFI staff had done, was
gather a few hundred distressed survivors and direct them to the
authorities, whilst making public the rising level of complaint the association
had been receiving. During the attack, entry was forced and UNADFI’s offices were
taken over and wrecked on two floors. Three terrified volunteer staff were insulted,
threatened and held hostage. A computer was vandalized and related dossiers, including
those containing the identities and addresses of those complaining about ‘le
Groupement,’ went missing. The most senior UNADFI volunteer present,
Matthieu Cossu, was escorted outside and forced to appear in a propaganda video
reading a prepared statement that 'le Groupement' was ‘not a cult.’ He
was surrounded by hundreds of self-righteous core adherents, screaming slogans
and waving banners - ‘UNADFI IS A CULT’, ‘SAVE OUR BUSINESSES', 'SAVE OUR JOBS,' etc. Even
then, the angry mob refused to leave the building. Labasor continued to demand
the presence of the president of UNADFI, Mme Janine Tavernier. He obviously
intended to make a propaganda video of her reading the same statement that ‘le
Groupement’ was ‘not a cult.’ However, although Mme Tavernier spoke to Labasor
by phone, she refused to surrender to what she knew to be Godzich’s criminal demands.
After several hours of further insults and threats, the mob left the scene and
released the three traumatized hostages. Apparently, infants in a nearby
kindergarten were also traumatized.
In the wake of this
attack for which, mysteriously, no participant was charged, it was revealed that
Godzich had previously tried to give a 'donation' of I00 000
francs ($150 000) to UNADFI. However, when Janine Tavernier, refused this
obvious bribe, Godzich coopted a couple of French academic useful idiots and financed
an association supposedly to 'campaign against mental manipulation.' A failed
attempt was also made by Godzich to file a lawsuit against UNADFI, on the
specious grounds that the association was circulating defamatory statements
about the company.
By 1995, the ‘French Parliamentary Commission Report’ had classified ‘le Groupement’ as a ‘deviant evangelical cult,’ but the wider ‘MLM commercial’ cult phenomenon was ignored. Subsequently, I learnt that, although successive French governments have accepted that cultism (or ‘radicalization’) represents a real and ongoing danger to citizens, French law does not set out the identifying characteristics of a cult (secte), let alone those of a blame-the-victim cultic racket.
However, the authors of the 1995 report must have been aware that numerous of Godzich’s core-adherents had been persuaded to buy exorbitantly priced tickets to fly to Phoenix Arizona. Here, French journalists had again filmed them with hidden cameras being secretly ‘baptised’ into the 'First Assembly of God,' by Jean Godzich’s younger brother, Pastor Leo Mark Godzich. This being a right wing, fundamentalist/creationist, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, so-called ‘Prosperity Gospel / Pentacostalist / Dominionist Church,’ just one branch of a mystifying, labyrinth of corporate structures known as ‘The Assemblies of God,’ and which again were linked to ‘Amway.’ The Belgian-registered travel agency, ‘Zenigold,’ that had been used to peddle these sinister jaunts, was part of Godzich’s own mystifying corporate labyrinth. When openly challenged on camera in the USA by a French journalist regarding the ‘right wing religious’ aspect of his so-called ‘direct selling business,’ Godzich first lied and played down its central role. When confronted with video footage featuring himself leading ‘prayers,’ and invoking ‘God,’ during the so-called ‘Dream Weekends’ and participating in the full immersion ‘baptisms,’ he was forced to run away. He could no longer continue with his authoritarian performance, so he refused all further contact with the French media.
Meanwhile, in the UK in June of 1994 an article was published in the London listings magazine, ‘Time Out.’ This piece was entitled, ‘Hidden Persuaders,’ and it appeared despite nonspecific threats from the legal representatives of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’
The ‘Time Out’ special investigation’ was written by ‘News / Features Editor,’ Tony Thompson, and it was headed:
‘Amway says it can make you rich beyond your dreams with its multi-level marketing system; critics say it only makes money for a very few at the top, and its techniques are worryingly cult-like.’
Tony had personally witnessed the sudden radical personality transformation of someone close to him who had been lured into ‘Amway.’ As a result, he had begun to research how cults function. Thus, published next to his article was a separate section quoting the work of Professor Robert Jay Lifton who, in 1961 (after 10 years of research, interviewing US servicemen and civilians held prisoner during the Korean War), published, ‘Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.’ In this standard, medical textbook, Lifton identified eight ‘themes’ which, if present in any group, indicate that its members are being subjected to a mixture of social, psychological and physical pressures, designed to produce radical changes in their individual beliefs, attitudes and behaviour.
1). ‘Milieu
control’ — the attempted control of everything an individual
experiences (i.e. sees, hears, reads, writes and expresses). This includes
discouraging subjects from contacting friends and relatives outside the group
and undermining trust in exterior sources of information; particularly, the
independent media.
2). ‘Personal or
mystical manipulation’ — charismatic (psychologically dominant) leaders create
a separate environment where specific behaviour is required; leading to group
members believing that they have been chosen and that they have a special
purpose. Normally group members will insist that they have not been coerced
into group membership, and that their new way of life and beliefs are the
result of a completely free choice.
3). ‘Demand for purity’ — everything in
life becomes either pure or impure, negative or positive, etc. This builds up a
sense of shame and guilt. The idea is promoted that there is no alternative
method of thinking or middle way, to that promoted by the group or by those outside
it. Everything in life is either good or bad and anything is justified provided
the group sanctions it as good.
4). ‘Confession’ — personal
weaknesses are admitted to, to demonstrate how group membership can transform
an individual. Group members often have to rewrite their personal histories and
those of their friends and relatives, denigrating their previous lives and relationships.
Other techniques include group members writing personal reports on themselves
and others. Outsiders are presented as a threat who will only try to return
group members to their former incorrect thinking.
5). ‘Sacred science’ — the belief in an
inexplicable power system or secret knowledge, derived from a hierarchy who
must be copied and who cannot be challenged. Often the group’s leaders claim to
be followers of traditional historical figures (particularly, established
political, scientific and religious thinkers). Leaders promote the idea that their
own teaching will also benefit the entire world, and it should be spread.
6). ‘Loading the
language’ — a separate vocabulary used to bond the group together and
short-circuit critical thought processes. This can become second nature within
the group, and talking to outsiders can become difficult and embarrassing.
Derogatory names, or directly racist terms, are often given to outsiders.
7). ‘Doctrine over
persons’ — individual members are taught to alter their own view of
themselves before they entered the group. Former attitudes and behaviour must
then be re-interpreted as worthless, and/or dangerous, using the new values of
the group.
8). ‘Dispensing of
existence’ — promotion of the belief that outsiders — particularly,
those who disagree with the teaching of the group — are inferior and are
doomed. Therefore, they can be manipulated, and/or cheated, and/or
dispossessed, and/or destroyed. This is justifiable, because outsiders only
represent a danger to salvation.
Tony Thompson quoted a
recovering ‘Amway’ adherent who described ‘huge monthly meetings at
venues like the Wembley Conference centre where he and thousands of others were
worked into a passionate frenzy then told to go out and find as many new
recruits as possible.’ This witness also described the ‘powerful doctrine’
controlling the ‘Amway’ faithful, which constantly instructed them not
to watch television or read newspapers or take notice of any ‘’negative
influences. There was a ‘strict dress code’ as well as ‘advice
on how to bring up children and relate to loved ones.’ Deeply deluded ‘Amway’ adherents feared
that ‘if the quit they would be giving up all hope of a happy future.’ Sadly,
the Time Out article also reported parts of the comic-book ‘commercial’ cover-story
as though it was true. This boasted that ‘seventy-three
thousand Amway distributors had conducted 50 million £ of sales in Britain 1992-1993,
and that the operation had more doubled in size compared with 1991-1992 and was
projected to rise to above 70 million £ for 1993-1994. Yet ‘Amway’ acknowledged
an annual churn-rate in its ranks of more than 50%. The absurdity of this
narrative was revealed by the fact that, at this time, the number of McDonalds
franchises in the UK was less than five hundred. Thus, Tony Thompson came close
to revealing the hidden, effectively 100%, overall, net-loss churn rate, but he
did reveal the fact that the sale of publications, recordings, tickets to meetings,
etc., was the underlying, and most profitable, part of the racket. For the
same, pay-through-the-nose-to-enter, marathon, ritual orgies of deluded
self-gratification were being regularly organized by several ‘Amway network leaders’
who posed as ‘financially free millionaire Diamond Distributors.’ As
well as the Wembley Conference centre, the UK’s fifteen thousand seat National
Exhibition Centre in Birmingham was also one of the venues. Again, these were
sell-out events regularly stealing the equivalent of millions of $. Over the
years, a never-ending chain comprising hundreds of thousands of wide-eyed
British ‘Amway’ adherents, like my own brother and his girlfriend, had been,
and were still being, indoctrinated to believe that ‘attending all the
business functions and buying the tools and Business Support Materials’ were ‘vital
steps in the plan to achieve total financial freedom.' Again, the
majority of this mountain of stolen money was being quietly exported out of the
UK via a labyrinth of expendable, legally ‘independent,’ but in fact interdependent,
privately owned companies, all centrally controlled from the USA. Again, the UK
government had been made complicit in this highly organized, criminal activity,
because HM Revenue and Customs had been collecting ‘Value Added Tax’ on a lot
of these unlawful transactions.
Interestingly, Tony
Thompson also discovered that Michael Aspel, (a popular veteran British
television celebrity) had presented an ‘Amway’ recruitment video. This
classic ‘MLM’ propaganda featured smiling couples with luxury houses,
cars, etc., all claiming to have acquired their prosperity, freedom and
happiness, thanks to the ‘Amway income opportunity.’
Whilst reading the following, bear in mind that, since the late 1990s, UK government regulators were in possession of not just all the above information, but also a Hell of a lot more This led to one senior UK regulator, Peter Bott, privately describing 'Amway' to me as operating like the 'Second Ku Klux Klan' in the 1920s. However, I had already formed that conclusion.
In 2006, it was revealed that a UK regulatory agency (the
‘Company Investigation Branch’ of the ‘Dept. of Trade and Industry’) was pursuing
a major law enforcement action against ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ In brief, this privately
owned company (first registered in 1973), which was a subsidiary of a gigantic,
American-based, privately owned, multi-national corporation (first registered in
1959), stood accused of peddling an ‘inherently objectionable dream-selling
scheme’ in contravention of the ‘Fair Trading Act, 1973’ and the ‘Lotteries
and Amusements Act, 1976’. Subsequently, John Hutton, the Business Secretary (trade
minister) in the Labour government of Tony Blair, filed a ‘public interest
bankruptcy petition’ in the UK High Court, seeking the immediate compulsory
closure of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ Although the UK national media took only a
passing interest in the story, according to the regulators, this civil
prosecution was the result of ‘the largest ever investigation of a British
company.’ Indeed, several truckloads of documentary evidence had been
seized at ‘Amway UK’s’ head office in the Buckinghamshire city of Milton
Keynes by a team of specialist CIB agents led by Peter Bott. However, after
looking beyond a wall of mind-numbing mathematical and linguistic hocus-pocus, the
regulators had initially been faced with an enigma.
During the thirty + years of ‘Amway UK’s’ existence,
its accountants had never once declared an annual net trading profit. In
fact, in just the period 2000-2006, ‘Amway UK’ had chalked up accumulated
net trading losses of approximately 15 million £. Although this disastrous
company had always been haemorrhaging financially, it had been kept alive with cash
transfusions declared as ‘deriving from other Amway subsidiaries in Europe
and Asia.’ Yet for decades, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ had been allowed to pose
as ‘Britain’s most successful direct selling company offering an entirely
legal, government approved, Multi-Level Marketing income/business opportunity.’
However, completely contrary to its nonspecific, jargon-laced ‘commercial’
cover-story, prior to 2006, there had never been the slightest official attempt
to determine what was the real function of this apparently pointless corporate
structure. For whilst ‘Amway UK’s’ own exciting comic-book narrative had
eventually boasted of 50 + millions £ of sales annually, via an expanding
salesforce rapidly approaching 100 thousand UK and Irish ‘distributors,’ the
regulators had now discovered that, in the adult world of quantifiable reality,
‘Amway UK’ had lately been declaring annual sales of only around 10
million £, whilst the average churn rate for participants in ‘Amway’s’
scheme had always exceeded 50% per year. Consequently, it was possible to
extrapolate from ‘Amway UK’s’ own records, that somewhere approaching one
million recruits had in fact passed through its so-called ‘distributor’ ranks
1972-2006. Indeed, all these people had signed take-it-or-leave-it contracts
which had also falsely labelled them as ‘Independent Business Owners (IBOs).’
Furthermore, after the deduction of their considerable start up and operating
costs, not one of this expanding flock of transient would-be entrepreneurs had
managed to generate so much as a penny of overall net income lawfully
by regularly retailing ‘Amway’-supplied products, and/or services, to
persons who were not fellow, so-called ‘IBOs.’ Thus, since by design,
there had never been a significant and sustainable source of revenue other than
that deriving internally from the purchases of ‘Amway UK’s’ own
so-called ‘salesforce,’ the hidden overall net-loss churn rate
in the company’s so-called ‘MLM income/business opportunity,’ was effectively
100%. Yet apparently, virtually no one had been complaining.
By 2006, with a bit of help, UK regulators had finally woken up and deduced that the real function of ‘Amway’s’ mysterious, chronically insolvent British subsidiary, had been to act as bait in a heavily disguised human trap. Sadly, whilst the UK national media had completely failed to identify it, and, by doing nothing to stop it, the authorities had effectively authorized it, year upon year, this insidious mechanism, comprising a labyrinth of legally ‘independent,’ but in fact interdependent, privately owned companies, had been allowed to lure and exploit an endless chain of fresh UK and Irish recruits. However, although the overwhelming majority of ‘Amway’s’ unwitting human quarry had remained for less than a couple of years and wasted a relatively small amount of money, a significant minority (around 5%) with access to enough independent funds, and/or credit, had been able to remain in the trap for extended periods, gradually wasting many thousands of £ and isolating themselves from anyone trying to reason with them. For even though they had no chance of establishing a viable business, just like chronic gambling addicts, chronic losers in ‘Amway’s’ rigged game of ‘commercial’ make-believe were totally convinced that they would ‘soon become winners,’ because they had ‘discovered a sure-fire way to make all your dreams come true.’
 |
| Mr. Justice Norrice. |
Despite the somewhat obvious reality that 'Amway's' so-called 'MLM income/business opportunity' had always been a cruel fake, in the spring of 2008, it was reported in ‘The Times’ that 'Amway UK Ltd.' had been ‘cleared at the High Court of dream selling, of operating an unlawful lottery and of being an unlawful trading scheme.' This, however, did not even come close to being an accurate summary of what was contained in the ambiguous, and astonishingly naïve, ruling handed down by one High Court Judge, Mr. Justice Norris, and which was subsequently upheld by two out of three Appeal Court Judges. For although Judge Norris accepted that the prosecution evidence demonstrated that the Government’s case against ‘Amway UK’ had been brought on valid grounds, he then ruled that 'the public interest bankruptcy petition' should be 'declined,' and no other penalty imposed. Sadly, in his ruling, the judge also failed to spot the far reaching implications contained in some truly jaw-dropping ‘defence evidence’ provided by Richard Berry, the senior corporate officer of another, apparently ‘independent,’ privately owned company known as, the ‘UK Direct Selling Association,’ of which ‘Amway UK’ had been the leading member and significant source of revenue. For Berry confessed to the court, albeit in the form of a foolish boast, that 'Amway’ operated its ‘Multi-Level Marketing’ scheme in eighty other countries around the world, and that, for two decades, the overwhelming majority of ‘direct selling companies’ operating in the UK had also been running similar ‘Multi-Level’ schemes. Yet although it was staring him in the face, the truth that ‘Amway’s’ entire multi-national operation has always been a dissimulated racket and that ‘Amway’ is by no means unique, was totally unthinkable to Judge Norris. Consequently, his refusal to grant the public interest bankruptcy petition, was made on the convoluted and absurdly improbable grounds that, although ‘Amway UK’s’ unlawful scheme had ‘remained unaltered for more than thirty years,’ in order to comply with UK legislation, its current legal representatives and company officers had given undertakings to the High Court that the previously unlawful 'business model' had been voluntarily paused and then ‘significantly revised in October 2007,’ and that certain of the company's ‘network leaders’ contracts’ had been ‘terminated, because they had broken Amway’s own rules.’ Thus, Judge Norris’s ruling was based on the demonstrable lie that it was just a few isolated British ‘Amway Diamond Distributors’ whose own ‘legally independent companies’ had been responsible for making unobtainable ‘earnings claims’ and peddling the unlawful ‘dream selling scheme,’ and that these were ‘unauthorized activities’ that ‘Amway UK’s’ company officers had been unaware of, but could now be trusted to have identified and banned.
However, even Judge Norris felt obliged to place on
record his own doubts that ‘Amway’s’ latest, modified, version of its ‘commercial’
cover-story was true. Nonetheless, his lack of curiosity as to how much money
had been stolen during all these years of ‘unauthorized activities,’ and
who had ultimately controlled this labyrinth of legally ‘independent,’ but
in fact interdependent, privately owned companies, and received the lion’s
share of the vast unlawful profits generated by this devious criminal mechanism,
has never been explained. For Judge Norris did not call for Jerry and Mandy
Scriven and Pat and Greta Gregory (the leaders of the British subsection of a giant,
world-wide, so-called ‘Amway Network’ known as ‘International
Business Systems’), to be investigated and held to account for the catalogue
of abusive crimes which, in his own ruling, he indirectly acknowledged, that they
and others had been committing. Yet for many years, these two smiling couples had
starred in ‘Amway UK’s’ bedazzling propaganda as, exemplary ‘Diamond Distributors
and Top Earners,’ but in 2006, they had suddenly been air-brushed out the company’s
exciting comic-book narrative, after being sacked from their so-called ‘Independent
Businesses’ and made scapegoats. Indeed, as far as I’m aware, not one
excommunicated ‘Amway UK’ scapegoat was ever interviewed by law
enforcement agents, or tax compliance officials, wanting to know where the bulk
of money they had stolen had gone and how much they had kept themselves. Subsequently,
knowing that they risked nothing from the authorities, the Scrivens and the
Gregorys spent years on the Net screaming their innocence and declaring
that, far from being ‘unauthorized,’ the activities for which they had
been kicked out of ‘Amway,’ had always been pursued with the full knowledge,
and enthusiastic participation, of 'Amway UK's' company officers. Yet,
mysteriously, neither the Scrivens nor Gregorys were called as witnesses to
perjury by the government prosecutors during the High Court proceedings, whilst
gagging clauses in their so-called ‘distributor’ contracts prevented
them from going to law. However, again for reasons that were never explained,
the regulators did not bother to tell Judge Norris, that they already knew damn-well
where most of the stolen money had gone and even approximately how much it
totalled. They also knew that there was plenty of documentary evidence, as well
as other far more reliable witnesses, proving ‘Amway’s’ company
officers’ perjury, but again these people were never called to testify. The
reason why I know this, is because I am one of the witnesses who, in 1997, was even
threatened with a lawsuit by ‘Amway UK’s’ legal representatives for
speaking out. I am also the person whose persistent well-informed complaint
finally triggered the civil investigation of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ in the
first place. However, I had called for a rigorous criminal inquiry into the wider
‘MLM’ phenomenon in the UK, hopefully leading to the re-establishment of
the rule of law, but the regulators had insisted that this would only take
place after the compulsory closure of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ using standard civil
bankruptcy procedures. Tellingly, they made sure never to put any of this
in writing.
In this way, not only was the exploitation of literally
hundreds of thousands of unwitting UK and Irish victims, resulting in the theft
by deception of hundreds of millions of $, by the real bosses of the ‘Amway’ racket,
quietly brushed under the carpet, but also, following this isolated and
ill-fated civil prosecution, the bosses of various, mainly American controlled,
‘Amway’ copycat ‘MLM’ rackets were given the green light to keep
their own corporate Trojan Horses legally registered in Britain. For today, no UK
or Irish law enforcement agency (civil or criminal) is trying to stop them, but
then, some of the individuals to have proved the most susceptible to 'MLM' recruitment
and exploitation, have been disgruntled police officers.
David Brear copyright 2026
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