UK Post Office/Fujitsu scandal - 'MLM' cultic rackets are not the only blame-the-victim fraud.

For decades, right under the noses of regulators, law enforcement agents, prosecutors, legislators, journalists, etc., the all-powerful bosses of an increasing-number of 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' companies have been allowed to get away with peddling a financially-suicidal, so-called 'Income/Business opportunity,' which has secretly had a (built-in) effectively 100% overall net-loss/churn rate of powerless participants. Currently, the number of ill-informed vulnerable persons being quietly churned each year through these highly-profitable, unoriginal, blame-the victim cultic rackets around the world, is counted in the tens of millions, and probably exceeds one billion per decade. Behind the kitsch facade of 'MLM/Direct Selling' have been secondary advanced fee frauds, in which victims have been peddled effectively-valueless 'step-by-step plans to achieve success in MLM.'

Decades of evidence, in the form of billions of constantly-churning losing 'MLM' contractors, proves that what has become commonly-referred to as 'MLM,' has actually been an ongoing criminogenic phenomenon of historic significance.

The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred, must have been entirely their own fault for not working hard enough. 

Chronic victims of blame-the-victim cultic rackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering cult victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse): depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc.

__________________________________________________________________

Recently, a cruel blame-the-victim fraud hidden behind corporate structures (albeit on a much smaller scale than the 'MLM' phenomenon), has again hit the headlines in the UK. Although this is not a cultic racket, there are aspects of the 'British Post Office Scandal' which can be compared to 'MLM' cultic racketeering; not least the chronic failure of law enforcement + the eyes, ears and mouths wide-shut complicity of politicians in positions of power.

 __________________________________________________________________

Post Office Ltd. is a UK registered company that offers products and services (including stamps and banking) to the public through a national network of around 11,500 post office branches. Almost all of these branch post offices are run by contractors known as sub-postmasters; the remaining 1% are directly managed by Post Office Ltd., these are known as Crown Post Offices.

Fujitsu Limited is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and based in Tokyo. It is the world's sixth-largest Information Technology services provider by annual revenue.

________________________________________________________________

The UK public has recently been horrified to watch a four-part television drama series, 'Mr. Bates vs The Post office.' The series was an accurate internal depiction of what has become known as the 'Post Office scandal' (British Post Office scandal - Wikipedia) - a miscarriage of justice in which more than 900 innocent sub-postmasters were prosecuted for theft, false accounting or fraud. However, this was due to a Fujitsu computer system called 'Horizon' (sold to the UK Post Office and installed at a cost of more than £ one billion), which made it appear that significant sums of cash were going missing, when this was not the case. The media has apparently made the assumption that the various faults in the Horizon system were the result of genuine errors in its design. However, this is not entirely clear; for the available, jargon-laced technical explanation of these matters is largely incomprehensible nonsense. What is clear, is that, for many years, persons in postions of authority in both the Post Office and Fujitsu, knew full-well that the 'Horizon' system was prone to widespread serious faults and was fundamentally unreliable, but both organizations pumped out the same lies about these matters - blaming everything on the innocent postmasters. In this way, the individual postmasters were deprived of key-information and deceived into believing that they were the only persons being accused of dishonesty and prosecuted. Obviously, the idea that hundreds of previously hard-working, law-abiding and trusted people would all suddenly begin committing exactly the same crime, could not possibly have been true. Indeed, in not one case was any independent evidence found that a postmaster had actually taken any money. Sadly, as a result of its historical origins, the UK Post Office has retained its own internal systems of investigation and prosecution.

The level of mental cruelty inflicted on the innocent postmasters was stomach-churning. Bear in mind that these were previously respected, and valued, members of their communities. Yet, they were publicly shamed as thieves and liars and forced to hand over the money that they were falsely-accused/convicted of stealing - leading many to lose their homes and their access to credit. Post Office investigators and prosecutors behaved like thugs - deceiving many of the innocent postmasters into believing that they should plead guilty to false accounting, and avoid prison sentences for theft. Families were torn apart and victims suffered from chronic physical, and psychological, deterioration symptoms. Some wound up in psychiatric hospitals (wrongly-diagnosed with being in denial) whilst a few committed suicide.

The television dramatization revealed what can happen when there is a chronic failure of law enforcement and justice, and when (in pursuit of money) the all-powerful bosses of corporate structures are permitted (by a series of complicit governments) to behave like totalitarian dictators - maintaining a monopoly of information as part of a criminal conspiracy designed to insulate them from liabilty, whilst simultaneously, making hundreds of ill-informed powerless contractors appear to be guilty of, and financially-liable for, crimes of which they were completely innocent.

Although, due to a resulting public outcry, all the surviving victims of this organized criminal enterprise are now suddenly going to be exonerated and compensated (at the command of the current UK government which is increasingly-desperate to hang on to power), it remains to be seen whether those who organized, hid and profited from it will be held fully to account. Tragically, more than 30 victims of the Post Office scandal have already died. According to London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, it's going to take several years to investigate these matters. A UK parliamentary committee, public enquiry is currently underway.

What Is the UK Post Office Scandal? (lawyer-monthly.com)

   

Fujitsu Japan remains tight-lipped on the Post Office scandal - BBC News

 David Brear (copyright 2024)

The Big 'MLM' Lie - Another chronic failure of law enforcement to face reality.

Amway Pyramid Scheme: ED Chargesheets Amway India; Alleges Money Laundering, Cheating | MLM - YouTube

Recently, in the wake of the forthcoming well-informed criminal prosecution of 'Amway India Enterprises,' I have had a number of interesting conversations on the subject of the Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie, with low-level employees of UK government/law enforcement agencies. It is, of course, effectively-impossible to get to speak to their superiors. As ever, these conversations fell into two distinct categories. Either the employee was completely disinterested, and/or easily offended, lamely reciting a script like a programmed robot, or the employee immediately dropped the script becoming personally friendly and supportive, whilst listening attentively to what I have to say. Indeed, it is surprising how it is now the majority of these people who are prepared to say that they too have personally-encountered 'MLM' adherents. They aready know that 'MLM' = pyramid scheme. Some know that 'MLM' also = cult. What I am actually telling them is that their superiors have not only been part of a chronic failure to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie, they have also been, and remain, complicit with it.

Of course, this official eyes, ears and mouths wide-shut attitude towards an obvious Big Lie, is not without precedent.

In the tragi-comic era of Donald Trump and 'QAnon,' the 'totalitarian' information/mind control technique known as, the 'Big Lie,' has suddenly attracted the attention of a new generation of critical commentators. 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. Yet, it has been known for a long time that, even when the most-destructive of 'Big Lies' gets repeated enough times, eventually many people will come to accept it as the truth. The actual truth then becomes a threat to the self-esteem of those who have fallen for the 'Big Lie,' and in this way, the actual truth itself can become mistaken for a lie. Consequently, the 'Big Lie' can be described as a form of sustainable deception, because it can also prevent victims from facing reality and complaining.

'The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor, is the mind of the oppressed.'

In the wake of his sudden 'shock horror' downfall in 2008, masses of critical material was suddenly produced on the subject of Bernie Madoff. Yet ironically, what was labelled by the media as, 'The Scam of the Century,' had actually been instigated in the previous century; for in the 20 years of its existence prior to 2008, no mainstream media outlet had begun to investigate, let alone expose, Madoff's obvious Big Lie. Furthermore, it was an open-secret on Wall St. that Madoff was a latter-day Charles Ponzi, who first preyed mainly on his own Jewish community with whom he socialised in New York and Florida. It was no coincidence that many Wall St. insiders had always avoided Madoff like the plague. Despite repeated warnings, senior US Securities and Exchange Commission agents not only failed to put an end to Madoff's Big Lie, they flatly refused to begin to inquire into his criminal activities. The useful idiots at the SEC whose willful-incompetence made them complicit with Madoff, were almost-exclusively lawyers with no practical experience of trading, or of Ponzi schemes for that matter. Since his downfall, there have been various documentaries and dramatised representations showing Madoff's pretence of affinity with both his prospective victims and certain 'regulators.' For obvious reasons, various victims and commentators have concluded that dark forces must also have been been at work, because what Madoff had been doing was so blatantly obvious.  

Perhaps an even more-disturbing explanation of these matters is that, completely contrary to what many people still prefer to believe, financial/trade regulators and specialist law enforcement agents, aren't employed to identify, and protect the public from, fraud. Far from it, for their suspiciously-vague remit has been concocted by legislators (and lobbyists), who evidently, have been far more interetested in maintaining confidence in the overall financial system. However, this short-sighted approach has actually had the reverse effect to that which was apparently intended. To illustrate the self-defeating, flawed logic at play here, a comparison can be made with the sports-bookmaking industry, which has generated huge revenues for governments via taxes on betting and on licensed bookmakers' profits. Consequently, if widespread cheating (event fixing) were to be publicly-revealed - resulting in the loss of public confidence in the honesty of popular sports - the revenues gathered by governments from licensed betting might collapse. Thus, the financial system and popular sports like horse racing have both come to rely on maintaining the reassuring belief that they are so tightly-regulated that extensive cheating cannot possibly thrive. For this dubious reason, those tasked with the regulation of both have felt obliged to turn a blind-eye to cheating. Cheats (above all people) understand this.

Thus, the more-extensive, and flagrant, cheating becomes in any confidence-based market: the more prone to ignoring it, the market's (supposed) regulators will become, whilst the more wealthy, and emboldened, the cheats will become. Of course, for centuries it has been observed that, 'if you pass any law, but then fail to enforce it, you effectively-authorise the very crime you were apparently seeking to prohibit.'

Thus, in 2007, the Big Lie was still alive, and growing, that Bernard L. Madoff was an admired and respected investor, popularly-known as 'The Wizard of Wall St.,' who for years had been successfully-managing the world's largest hedge fund - totalling $50+ billions. You could even find Madoff (and his company) on Wikipedia, where his grandiose comic-book fiction was falsely-presented as established fact supported by many reliable independent sources; whilst all accurate evidence-based analysis (no matter how obvious) would have been systematically purged from Wikipedia as, 'original thought/ research.' Until 2008, an army of highly-paid attorney's would have pounced on anyone prepared to risk public ridicule, and financial ruin, in an attempt to expose Madoff's 'Big Lie.'

However, as we all now know, Madoff was secretly just another sociopathic-charlatan (one in an ever-lengthening-line of such world-class liars). Yet unoriginal economic-alchemists like Madoff, should not be that difficult to detect; for they have all pretended moral and intellectual authority whilst peddling essentially the same ('far too good to be true') financial fairy story. 

The Madoffs of this world always claim that they have access to a secret knowledge which can enable you to earn money, but first you have to trust them with some of your own money. This enticing fiction can be made to seem like fact, so long as fresh victims can keep being found and the supply of stolen money keeps rolling in. Madoff's colossal and outrageous version of what is popularly-known as a 'Ponzi Scheme,' eventually attracted approximately 37000 bedazzled 'investors,' including certain A-list celebrities (or rather the financial advisers to certain A-list celebrities).

In truth, Madoff did have access to a secret knowledge, but this was the fact that his so-called 'hedge fund' was a complete fake. The impressive supply of stolen money that kept rolling into Madoff's control (and which falsely-placed him high on the list of America's richest citizens) had only come from his victims, because in all Ponzi and pyramid schemes (no matter how cunningly they have been disguised), the universal identifying characteristic is that victims have been tricked into buying (infinite) shares of their own (finite) money. 

Madoff's 'Big Lie' was only uncovered when the financial crisis hit in 2008. At that time, too many of his victims suddenly needed to cash-in what they believed to be their 'growing secure investment.' For a while Madoff managed to hide the truth by continuing to do what he had always done (pay out some of his 'investors'), but as his pile of stolen money rapidly-dwindled, he began to realize that the game was up. On paper his fake hedge fund was massively-profitable, but in reality it was insolvent to the tune of tens of billions of $.

Faced with exposure, public humiliation and jail, Madoff broke-down and tearfully confessed the truth to his two sons. Shocked and confused, they had little idea what to do, except seek qualified-advice from one of their father's own attorneys. However, the attorney himself initially found it difficult to believe the truth, because he too was one of Madoff's bedazzled victims. Indeed, he briefly preferred to believe that his financial genius celebrity-client must have lost his mind. However, reality soon dawned and the attorney instructed Madoff's sons to go to the relevant authorities and turn their father in. Ironically, the situation which they reported to FBI agents in New York, again initially seemed to be too fantastic to be true.

Prior to his arrest, Madoff was widely-reported to have failed in a suicide pact with his wife, but there is little independent evidence to confirm this. 

To be perfectly honest, it beggars belief that Madoff's crimes remained undetected for so long, because, once you fully-understand the absurd, underlying nature of a Ponzi/pyramid scheme, all that was required to determine reality, was simply to verify whether Madoff had actually been making the profitable trades that he claimed to have been making. Laughably, the briefest-examination of his company's actual bank records would have revealed that the size and source of Madoff's company revenue was not at all what he had been pretending on the thousands of comic-book 'account statements' he'd been busily churning out over the years. However, it seems that no one ever thought to make this most-basic of common-sense checks. The interested parties were so in awe of the 'Wizard of Wall St.,' that they were unable to demand that he produce independent quantifiable evidence proving that he was not a conman. Evidently, Madoff was under no common-sense (legal) obligation to declare such evidence.

Another major factor facilitating Madoff's crimes was that he was an international celebrity whose expert opinion on financial matters was regularly sought by journalists. He was also noted for his public gifts to charity. Indeed, Madoff operated in plain sight right under the noses of journalists, financial regulators and law enforcement agents. Yet, for two decades, although the 'too good to be true' aspect of Madoff's financial fairy story was questioned a couple of times in obscure press articles, officially, he never faced any investigation. The laws he was breaking on a daily basis, were never enforced. 

Even when a detailed evidence-based analysis was handed on a plate to senior agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission (revealing exactly what Madoff had been up to), no investigation was launched. The well-informed urgent warnings of an independent financial fraud investigator and analyst, Harry Markoplos (and his associates), were mysteriously buried for 9 years. During this time, Madoff's Big Lie was habitually presented as the truth by numerous unquestioning mainstream commentators. 

As previously-explained, all the apparently profitable stock market trades which Madoff kept telling the world he was making, never actually took place. However, the wise monkeys at J.P. Morgan Bank who handled Madoff's accounts and who, therefore, must have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, that their financial-genius client wasn't actually buying, or selling, the mountains of stock which he claimed, never once approached the authorities to say that there was something radically wrong. It is now a matter of public record that Madoff used J.P. Morgan Bank to launder almost all of the billions of dollars he stole by means of fraud. Subsequently, J.P. Morgan was merely accused (as a corporate structure) of not reporting any concerns about (what turned out to be) a criminal client. Without accepting any fault, in 2014, J.P. Morgan was absolved of all further liability, after agreeing to pay $2.6 billions to settle all outstanding claims (government and private) connected to the bank's previous participation in thousands of Madoff's crimes. J.P. Morgan also promised that, henceforth, its own staff will not to be so conveniently deaf, dumb and blind, when the bank is being used to facilitate fraud.

Whilst it was an undeniable fact that employees at the SEC hadn't actually been doing any regulating in the case of Madoff, the SEC's Chief Legal Counsel subsequently made the nonsensical claim that his agency was doing its job, but was obliged to follow procedures laid down by legislators. What this dunce with a law diploma was actually admitting (albeit indirectly), was that the SEC was worse than useless, because its agents chronic failure to stop Madoff had actually made it appear that his 'Big Lie' was the truth. Thus, when Madoff was finally forced to confess to his crimes, the leadership of the SEC still refused to admit that they were at fault.

Perhaps that most stomach-churning evidence perfectly-illustrating how chronic regulatory failure had been exploited by Madoff, came when he was filmed performing his reality-inverting act to an audience of wide-eyed believers (including some well-known financial journalists). The irony of what Madoff said was exquisite. In response to a suspiciously-convenient question, he assured his audience that the rules governing Wall St. had become effectively impossible to get away with breaking, because the stock market was so tightly regulated. Of course, Madoff understood the laughable reality of the situation better than anyone.

Thus, prior to 2008, to the average person, let alone to his victims, the full-truth about Madoff's criminal enterprise, would have been completely unthinkable.

• How could all these apparently sophisticated observers be so willfully-blind, and/or lazy, and/or gullible, and/or incompetent, and/or corrupt? 
• How could such an outrageous falsehood be allowed to exist officially-unchallenged for so long and, thus, attain such colossal proportions?

Bearing the above in mind, today it is still officially-accepted that:

'Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is a perfectly legal form of commercial enterprise (part of the age old Direct Selling Industry) involving approximately 130 millions sellers around the world who are contractors of hundreds of MLM companies.'

In reality, each year for several decades, tens of millions of ill-informed temporary de facto slave recruiters have continued to be quietly churned through these 'Amway' copy-cat cultic rackets. Just as in the somewhat smaller Madoff scandal, the number of persons who have been, and who remain, sliently-complicit with the Big 'MLM Income Opportunity' Lie, is vast. Again the damage being caused here, has not just been financial. 

David Brear (copyright 2023)

'MLM' is not an industry - Julie Anderson Interviews Robert FitzPatrick - 'Anti-MLM Declaration.'

 

In this interview with Julie Anderson, Robert FitzPatrick goes over his 'Anti MLM Declaration.' In his document, Robert states in conclusion that:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) should:

• end the current policy of neglect and presumption of MLM "legitimacy"
• initiate investigations of MLM structure, methods and consequences
• refer findings to the US Dept. of Justice.

In a recent comment sent anonymously to me, Robert FitzPatrick and I were accused of stopping (American) 'MLM' victims from filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission by 'criticizing' it. 

In response, I posted the following:

__________________________________________________________________

Whoever you are, your comment is merely a limp apology for the chronic failure of US regulators to do their job and protect the American public. Furthermore, this chronic failure in the USA has led to the Big 'MLM' Lie being allowed to spread all around the world.

Since 1979, the FTC's official policy has been to sit on the fence pretending that 'MLM is a perfectly legal form of direct selling/commercial enterprise - provided potential income claims are not exaggerated and certain conditions are respected concerning the % of retail sales being conducted.' Yet each time an isolated 'MLM' company has been investigated by the FTC, it has been found to have always been acting illegally by design -making outrageous fake potential income claims and with virtually no authentic retail sales to persons who have not been contractors of that company.
Consequently, the FTC has issued what can appear to casual observers to be well-informed public warnings that 'MLMs' can be frauds. Laughably, every red flag that the FTC has outlined to the public (which indicates a fraudulent 'MLM'), has obviously been flying over every single 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM income opportunity.'

Not one 'MLM' company has set common-sense limits on the number of contractors being signed up or on the areas where they are supposed to find customers.

All 'MLMs' have offered their constantly- churning losing contractors commission payments on their own purchases and on the purchases of their recruits, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

All 'MLMs' have sought to hide, and/or mystify, the overall effectively 100% net-loss/churn rates for their so-called 'income opportunities.'

Thus, contrary to what you imagine, I am not criticizing the FTC, I'm absolutely condemning this government agency and those who have been in charge of it. I have repeatedly said that the FTC is a pathetic joke which should, itself, have been flying a flag ------- a white one! 

__________________________________________________________________

Years ago, as part of an attempt to rescue members of my family from the clutches of the 'Amway' racketeers, I wrote to various individuals in the UK: including trade regulators, law enforcement agents, legislators, journalists, editors, etc. However, I got absolutely no serious response to my urgent concerns. What I said at that time, is in broad agreement with Robert FitzPatrick's 'Anti-MLM Declaration.' 

The following is part of what I originally-wrote in 1999 when there was no Anti-'MLM' Movement in sight:

What has become popularly-known as, 'Multi-Level Marketing,' has been neither multi-Level nor marketing. On the contrary, it has been a reality-inverting, self-perpetuating, cultic racket in which victims have been exposed (without their fully-informed consent) to long-established, co-ordinated, devious techniques of persuasion (social, psychological and physical) designed to shut-down their critical, and evaluative, faculties. In this way, millions of our fellow citizens (including members of my family in Yorkshire) have been temporarily dissociated from external reality and deceived into buying infinite shares of what can only be their own finite money; all in the false-expectation of a demonstrably-non-existent future reward. In exchange for their unlawful losing investment payments (which have been laundered as 'lawful retail sales'), 'MLM' victims have been given exorbitantly-priced (effectively unsaleable) goods/services. Whilst they have remained under the contol of the pernicious 'MLM' fiction, victims have been deluded de facto slaves dissipating their own physical, financial, social, family and mental resources in an attempt to lure others into the same blame-the-victim cultic trap. It remains unclear how much damage this historically-significant, but still unrecognised, criminogenic phenomenon has done, and is doing, to the UK economy, not to the mention the social, and psychological, damage it has done, and is doing, to our fellow citizens.

David Brear (copyright 2023)

___________________________________________________________________________________

International Association to Expose, Study and Prevent Pyramid Schemes Website    Donate   News   About   Pyramid Schemes   Resources  April, 2023 From: Robert L. FitzPatrick Dear PONZINOMICS Readers, Colleagues and Friends, Saying It Loud "ANTI-MLM" is now a bona fide, large-scale consumer movement reaching millions around the world. More than a "consumer" movement, ANTI-MLM is, first, a movement for Truth over Big Lie. Movement status was achieved only within the last 5 years or so, after decades of being denied, discredited or ignored. In this early stage, ANTI-MLM has no office, spokesperson, or treasury. These may come. It does have volunteers, activists, academics, attorneys, researchers, podcasters, collegial networks, Reddit subgroups, and international conferences. Victim silence and shame are breaking down. ANTI-MLM is now respected and recognized by the media. ANTI-MLM is growing. ANTI-MLM has profound grievances against MLM – billions in consumer losses, millions of damaged lives, disrupted families, pseudo-economics distorting work values, false feminism to exploit women, deceptive income claims raising false hopes, quack health remedies, cult coercion, corruption of regulators, and pyramid scheme fraud on a global scale. Yet, beyond grievances, ANTI-MLM is still formulating what it stands for. ANTI-MLM does not have a common definition or even description of MLM, and therefore does not have a unified position on what to do about MLM. Is MLM just a bad "business" or is it racketeering? Is it a real "industry" with a competitive market and a trade association or just a Ponzi scam using lawyers and lobbyists to disguise and protect it? Is MLM a form of direct selling that just needs more "retail" or is it a calculated pyramid scheme that cannot be reformed? Are regulatory "rules" needed or a ban on "endless chain" financial schemes? As penalties for MLM CEOs and vanguard recruiters – fines and reprimands or jail time? Is the appropriate law enforcement agency the FTC that regulates trade or the FBI that prosecutes frauds? PONZINOMICS is the first book to dissect and fully describe MLM, how it began, the "direct selling" disguise, pyramid scheme model, the lobbying and evasion of law, and its cultic character and methods. It's an ANTI-MLM textbook. Other books from new authors are coming soon, as well as new documentaries, podcasts and websites. The facts of MLM are known. Irrefutable evidence keeps mounting of MLM's perverse identity and the gigantic scale of its harm. But Anti-MLM has not yet made its own, unifying "Declaration" of what MLM is, and what needs to be done about it. To advance the movement and support informed dialogue, I offer a "Declaration" for ANTI-MLM (edited for brevity) #1: MLM Is Not “Business”; MLM Is Not “Direct Selling” MLM contracts are never voluntary. Necessary information is always withheld. A fair exchange of value does not occur. The MLM financial proposition is inherently deceptive and harmful. Sustained, profitable retailing – direct selling – is non-existent and impossible under "MLM." #2: The Use of Business Terminology for MLMs Is Inappropriate and Misleading Using conventional business terms is misleading, inaccurate, and reinforces MLM's "business" disguise. “Sales, distributor, profit, direct selling, compensation, bonus," etc., do not apply in describing endless chain/money transfer scams. "Manager, Executive, Coach, and Director," etc., misleadingly indicate managerial or decision-making roles in a real business, when they refer only to levels of pyramid recruiting. #3: MLMs Are Essentially Identical; MLM Product-Transactions Launder Money-Transfers and Disguise MLM as Direct Selling MLMs are distinct, recognizable, essentially identical. All exhibit an endless-chain structure, payment and recruiting mandates, and extreme money-transfers from later to earlier participants. All produce the same devastating loss rates. MLM product-transactions at fixed pricing are not market-based, not driven by consumer demand, but are induced costs for securing recruiting-chain positions and transferring money from later to earlier recruits. #4: Multi-Level Marketing Is a Destructive Cult To enroll, gain money from, control, and silence victims, MLMs use undue influence and coercive control, resulting in financial loss, damaged relationships and psychological harm. They lure victims with utopian false promises and claims of mystifying knowledge for gaining financial success and fulfillment. Recruits are indoctrinated to accept the "infinite" endless-chain as a financial model, that "belief" shapes reality, to shun family and friends who question MLM, to reject critical thinking, and to unquestioningly believe and strictly obey MLM leaders – while paying fees, purchasing products and recruiting. #5: US Law Enforcement Policy toward Multi-Level Marketing Is Unfounded; Perpetuates Harm; Must Be Changed. Evidence does not support US law enforcement's presumption of MLM legitimacy and neglect of investigation and prosecution. Decades of evidence irrefutably show: Absence of profitable and sustainable retail selling – invalidating the MLM identity of "direct selling" and revealing a closed, rigged financial scam. Annual loss rates among MLM participants in excess of 99% – invalidating MLM claims of "income opportunity" and revealing enormous harm to millions each year. Pervasive and deliberate falsehoods regarding “direct selling” identity, costs, health claims, failure rates, business opportunity, and recruiting requirements – revealing systematic deception and intentional harm. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) should: end the current policy of neglect and presumption of MLM "legitimacy" initiate investigations of MLM structure, methods and consequences refer findings to the US Dept. of Justice.