Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Exposing the Orwellian Closed-Logic Behind 'AG1’s' ‘Unlimited Rewards’ scam

Today, I began to examine a company called 'AG1,' formerly known as 'Athletic Greens.'

This is not the front for an 'Amway' copycat 'MLM commercial' cult, but there are many parallels, not least the cover of an effectively-valueless product along with a reality-inverting dictionary.

Chris Ashenden

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb1g-Cbcjwo&t=1066s

The man behind 'AG1' is a fomer used car salesman / police officer from New Zealand called Chris Ashenden. 

Chris is actually a convicted conman in his homeland, but who ran off to the USA to avoid being held to account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AG1_(company)

Some of the celebrities who have been reported as having 'invested in AG1' are  Hugh Jackman, Cindy Crawford and Lewis Hamilton.

January 2025, Ashenden's company was valued at US$1.2 billion.

'AG1' sells a green powder priced at around US$100 for one month's supply. The company uses what is known as 'influencer marketing' particularly on podcasts. For each new customer an existing customer finds, an 'electronic reward voucher of $15' is offered.

By charging nearly US$ 300 per kilo for what is essentially powdered, dehydrated vegetation, the boss of this racket has succeeded in creating a reality-inverting dictionary to peddle common grass and algae at a premium price - as though it is some sort of exclusive luxury commodity.

Apart from the fact the green powder is cheaply produced, exhorbitantly priced, and of dubious benefit, the absurdly simple scam behind all 'AG1’s' mystifying, closed-logic, technical-sounding, Orwellian jargon, is neither original nor unique. 

Essentially, this is nothing more than a 'high-tech' adaptation of a classic pre-WWII British newspaper fraud. In such old-time scams, crooks rented post-office box addresses and advertised an 'authentic cigarette lighter and a portrait of the King' if you sent in 'just one two shilling postal order,' only to mail the unwitting customer a single match inside an envelope. Crucially, the promised 'portrait' was simply a penny stamp stuck to the outside of the envelope used to mail the match. While technically fulfilling the literal definition of the words in the advert, the transaction was an absurd confidence trick. 

'AG1's' boss, Chris Ashenden, has been getting away with an essentially identical semantic confidence trick. He's been baiting his victims with the enticing offer of what appear to be Unlimited 'Referral Rewards,' yet the hidden reality is that (according to the small print) his victims are permitted to redeem only one single '$15 electronic reward voucher' per month, but the 'vouchers' automatically expire after 12 months. Just like the vintage scammers who hid behind the literal definition of a match (which can light a cigarette), 'AG1's' boss can point to the literal truth that you can generate endless $15 monthly reward vouchers. Yet this cloaks the absurd reality that they are a valueless illusion. For no matter how many you acquire, you can never redeem them, because at just one per month, they will automatically vanish before you can. 

Thus, the all-powerful boss of the 'AG1' racket pockets 100% of his victims' marketing efforts, while captured players in this, closed-logic ('heads I win: tails you lose') game, are condemned to remain trapped in a powerless position of financial loss.

David Brear (copyright 2026)