Don’t Fall For This Ancient Scam - Your Success Is Not Inevitable

I was furloughed when the pandemic hit the journalism sector. I kept my job but there was no guarantee I would still have it in a few months. It was a precarious situation.

A childhood friend approached me to ask if I'd be interested in attending a webinar he was organizing as part of his new business. It was all a bit vague but he seemed excited and I had nothing to do during the day but ponder my uncertain situation. I decided to attend.

I went to the 30-minute online meeting and watched as 50 other people fell hook, line, and sinker for a multi-level marketing scheme disguised as a ‘business opportunity’ that would rob them of their meager savings. How many of them, I wondered, had just lost their jobs? How many struggled to provide for their families?

The webinar promised this opportunity would provide exponential income growth, a flexible schedule, your own business, and all this from the comfort of your home. No more uncertainty, no more bosses deciding your fate, no more rigorous schedules and commuting during a deadly pandemic — your income would now depend on you and only you and how hard you worked.

As the webinar drew to a close, the host asked people to raise their virtual hands if they were interested in proceeding. I watched as a sea of emojis filled my screen and my heart sank. Later, my acquaintance asked if I was interested in joining. I considered warning him that this was a money-grabbing scam. I should have. Instead, I politely declined.

A tale as old as time

Since time immemorial, scammers have targeted vulnerable and naive people looking to improve their lot. Every generation has had to face greedy and unscrupulous people who will think nothing of promising you the world in exchange for your hard-earned money.

There is a new breed of snake-oil salesmen who are flourishing online. They are the coaches, and the gurus, and the MLM babes. They are usually seen promising that their $99.99 course will bring in millions or a soulmate. They may be your former high school bully sliding into your DMs acting like you are long-lost friends finally reconnecting. They’ll always have a lucrative business opportunity for you.

But while many people will brush them off, there are the desperate and the vulnerable who can barely feed their families who will listen. Because what these people sell isn’t a business idea, a skill, a product, or a service. What they sell is hope — empty hope. They are hope-peddlers who will make the desperate and the vulnerable believe that they can easily change their situation and improve their families’ lives. They take advantage of people’s insecurities and weaknesses to make a quick buck.

And that’s sick.

How vulnerable people fall for pseudo “business opportunities”

Nowadays, one of the most popular ways to make money off the back of the vulnerable and naive is through multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs). There are numerous MLMs, including Avon, Beachbody, and Forever, to name a few. Most involve scammy practices that extort and belittle people.

A multi-level marketing scheme is a direct-sales strategy where firms encourage existing distributors to recruit new distributors. They then get paid a percentage of the new recruits’ sales. You can tell you’re being recruited for an MLM if someone you barely know approaches you about an elusive ‘business’ opportunity out of the blue. They will be vague about what the business entails and the work you’d have to put in.

But, they will wax lyrical about the money potential, the personal development, the flexibility, and the opportunity to have your own business. These baseless claims are likely to be just that — baseless and misleading.

The Consumer Awareness Institute found that 99% of people who participate in MLMs lose money. Despite this, their popularity surged during the pandemic. This was partly due to the general increase in online shopping during the quarantine periods. However, some recruiters exploited people’s unstable employment situations and financial insecurity to convince them to join.

“When Cami finally left, she was so afraid for her well-being, she contemplated getting a restraining order against the man who recruited her.”

In 2020, Pop culture YouTube channel As/Is released a mini-documentary showing exactly what it’s like to be scammed by a multi-level marketing scheme (MLM).

In the video, Cami, a young nurse, describes how she met a guy at a club and went on what she believed to be a date. Instead, it turned out he was attempting to recruit her to his MLM through a recruitment session attended by other ‘entrepreneurs’.

She got sucked into the business and was encouraged to spend upwards of $600 per month on ‘product’ from the company that she could then sell on. Cami did this for two years before she realized the business was focused less on selling and more on recruitment, because, as she said ‘that’s where the money was.’

While she was there, Cami was pressured to attend several meetings every week which lasted hours. She was told that any personal problems she had should be discussed with her upline — the man who recruited her. This, she said, was done so she could be cut off from the outside world. When Cami finally left, she was so afraid for her well-being, she contemplated getting a restraining order against the man who recruited her.

Both her relationship with the MLM and the man had the marks of an abusive, controlling partner. Cami was cut off from her friends and family and forced to attend numerous meetings which left her exhausted. By the time she left, she had lost many of her friends, she had lost her confidence, she had wasted money and she had wasted two years of her life to a cultish MLM and a creepy recruiter.

Cami’s story is one of many cautionary tales to emerge from the MLM world. People have lost their life’s savings to schemes like this one, they’ve lost friends and family relationships. Nevertheless, these companies continue to recruit desperate people who are looking to improve their lot in life.

These scammers will often lure you in with the promise that if you work hard, you will succeed. Your success is inevitable, they will say. It is unsurprising that this false notion of certain success appeals to people who have just endured a chaotic, dangerous pandemic that flipped our world upside down.

Scammers will always go after people’s insecurities and vulnerabilities in an attempt to profit off them. The difference between legitimate businesses solving problems and scammers looking to make a quick buck is simple: one sells realistic solutions and one sells empty hope. And the litmus test? It’s that old adage — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

My acquaintance aggressively posted about his MLM on social media for about a month. Then, it just stopped. I don’t know how much he sunk into the business and to this day I wonder whether I should have said something at the time. Perhaps if more of us abandoned the notion that “it’s not my place” but instead called out shady practices, they wouldn’t be as successful. After all, evil prevails when good people do nothing.