How did American billionaire racketeers peddling the Big 'Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)' Lie avoid criminal liability in the UK and Ireland?

Whilst reading the following article, bear in mind that there is no quantifiable evidence (e.g. income tax payment receipts) proving that anyone who has a signed a contract with an 'Amway' copycat, so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing Direct Selling' company offering a so-called 'income/business opportunity,' has actually established a lawful, and commercially viable, business, in which an overall net-income has been generated (after the deduction of all start-up and operating costs) via the regular retailing of goods/services for a profit based on value and demand to members of the general public (i.e. persons who are not fellow 'MLM' contractors motivated by a false expectation of future reward). Thus, anyone claiming or implying that one penny of overall net-income, let alone life changing sums of money, can be generated lawfully by participating in a so-called 'MLM direct selling income/business opportunity,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide any quantifiable evidence to back up his/her non-specific anecdotal statements. 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.’

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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, Godzich 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 business 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. However, for years, Wead had been performing the same act for 'Amway' all around the world

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.

https://skepdic.com/timeout.html 

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 they 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’. 

John Hutton

Subsequently, John Hutton, the Business Secretary (trade minister) in the Labour government of Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, 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 1973-2006. 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 Alastair Norris.

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 Alastair 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