‘Amway’ and ‘Scientology,’ Apart From Their Labels, What’s the Difference?

..by blog contributor David Brear, Guide to the Amway Labyrinth. . .

‘A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.’

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Readers might be interested to know that, currently, around eighteen thousand five hundred hits appear when you search on ‘Google’ for: ‘Amway Scientology.’ However, this is hardly surprising since, down the years, all intellectually rigorous observers have been struck by the blatant (underlying) similarities between the two groups. In fact, it has become a matter of public record that a significant number of unquestioning players of the ‘Scientology’ game of make-believe have also been easily seduced into becoming de facto slaves of the ‘Amway’ myth.


Recently, there have been headline reports in the international media that a major criminal trial involving the ‘Church of Scientology’ and some of its leading adherents has opened in France. The charges (resulting from typical complaints filed up to ten years ago by destitute former adherents) comprise ‘d’escrocrie en bande organisée’ (‘organized fraud’) and ‘exercise illégal de la pharmacie’ (‘illegal practise of pharmacy’). Despite the mysterious refusal of State prosecutors to take prompt action, an independent Investigating-Judge, Jean-Christophe Hullin, examined the same compelling evidence and concluded that ‘Scientology’ has precious little to do with traditional religion. It is a deceptive commercial business using a manipulative system of progressively expensive initiation (dressed-up as a scientifically-based faith) designed to exploit vulnerable individuals to the benefit of a gang of arrogant racketeers based in the USA. At the risk of repeating myself, no matter what transpires in the current, localised French challenge to the authenticity of the global ‘Scientology’ myth , it will forever remain one of the sickest ironies of history that the United States of America, a nation born out of an enlightened rebellion against absolutism, should have poured trillions of tax dollars and the blood of hundreds of thousands of its finest citizens into keeping latter-day absolutism at bay in the 20th century, only have its elected leaders completely fail to recognize essentially the same cancer (albeit in heavy disguise) not just multiplying unchecked in the ‘Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,’ but also infecting the rest of the world.


True to form, ‘Scientology’s’ aggressive echelon of French apologists steadfastly pretend that their ‘Church’:

- is a legitimate, and long-established, world-religion.

- cannot be held to blame for the actions of its individual members.

- is the innocent victim of an unwarranted attack by religious bigots.

- always offers a refund to anyone who is not satisfied. etc.

However, the seven French citizens named in the ‘Scientology’ indictment (who risk maximum fines of 1 million Euros each and ten years in prison) are, in fact, not officially recognised (on the charge sheet) as members of any ‘Church’ or ‘faith group,’ but merely as officers of two (apparently independent) corporate structures registered in France as:

1. ‘SARL Scientology Espace Liberté (Scientology Free Space Inc.)’ a.k.a. ‘SARL SEL,’ a privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company with a declared purpose of being a retail outlet for books, recordings and various merchandise and educational courses (situated in the 17th district of Paris).

2. ‘Association spiritual de l’Eglise de Scientology - Celebrity Center (Spiritual Association of the Church of Scientology - Celebrity Center)’ a.k.a. ‘Ases - CC,’ the French branch of an international philanthropic organization (originally incorporated in the USA in the 1950s).

The widespread inaccurate reporting of recent events in France is a perfect example of how mystifying ‘Scientology’ is and how its manipulation functions, in that, although the group’s own ‘religious’ script continues to be repeated (without detailed qualification or heavy irony) by most commentators, officially, there is no ‘Church of Scientology’ in the French republic. What’s more, there never has been. Indeed, the impossibly-complex international conglomerate which is now most-commonly referred to as ‘Scientology,’ was first presented externally to the American public in 1950 as a single privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company, arbitrarily defined by its instigator as the ‘Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation Inc.’ This initial corporate structure was almost immediately challenged by numerous, intellectually-rigorous observers as a counterfeit beacon luring the vulnerable, and unwary, into a crackpot pseudo-scientific swindle with potentially disastrous consequences. Tellingly, within less than 5 years it had been dissolved to prevent, and divert, investigation and isolate its instigator from liability. Since that time, the underlying fiction has survived all further low-level challenges to its authenticity by subdividing and multiplying its constituent chapters and verses like cancer cells. In its wake, has been left a grim trail of destitution, debt, dissociation, depression, divorce and even death. Today, the same old fiction continues to be presented externally around the globe as a mystifying labyrinth of countless, ever changing and expanding corporate structures, arbitrarily defined as the ‘International Church of Scientology,’ comprising various parent ‘Churches,’ including, the ‘American Church of Science,’ the ‘Church of Spiritual Technology,’ etc., and numerous subsidiary ‘Churches’ and affiliated groupings of adherents, including, ‘United Churches of Florida’; ‘AAS’ (‘American Association of Scientologists’), ‘HASI’ (‘Hubbard Association of Scientologists International’); and as numerous unaffiliated groupings of adherents, including ‘CCHR’ (‘Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights’), ‘WHF’ (‘Way to Happiness Foundation’); ‘ABLE’ (‘Association for Better Living and Education’); ‘CBAA’ (‘Concerned Businessmen’s Association of America’); ‘ARAS’ (‘Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences’), ‘Narconon’, ‘Criminon’, etc.; and as numerous ‘privately-controlled, limited-liability commercial companies,’ including, the ‘Hubbard Explorational Company’; ‘OTC’ (‘Operation and Transport Corporation’); ‘Scientific Press of Phoenix Inc.’; ‘New Era Publications Inc.’, ‘Southern Land Sales and Development Inc.’; ‘Distribution Center Inc.’, ‘HealthMed Inc.’, ‘Sterling Management Systems Inc.’, etc.


Behind this shifty (but frighteningly familiar) edifice lurks a deceptively kitsch Utopian myth of exclusive redemption in a future, secure existence (where only unquestioning believers win Health, Prosperity, Happiness, Freedom, etc.). Self-evidently, this closed-logic game of make-believe is neither original nor unique. Therefore, it cannot be fully-understood in isolation. Although it remains hard for some casual observers to accept, the wider evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the technical-sounding trademark, ‘Scientology,’ was plucked out of thin air in 1952 as the label for what was to become one of the most ridiculous, but nonetheless pernicious and profitable, totalitarian/cultic rackets in recent history. On closer inspection, ‘Scientology’ turns out to be the identical (criminogenic) twin of ‘Amway’- the entrance to a sustainable ‘advanced fee fraud’ based on a perverse plagiarism of various, traditional, esoteric, ritual belief systems. ‘Scientology’s’ fictitious, dualistic scenario of control has been peddled as fact to its core-adherents using a cocktail of pseudo-scientific mystification combined with the traditional myth of a ‘Supreme Spirit of Evil in a state of everlasting conflict with a Supreme Spirit of Good,’ but transposed into the vocabulary and imagery of 20th century, American comic-book science-fiction.


According to the bleating flock of apparatchiks at the ‘Scientology’ Ministry of Truth: currently, there are 8 millions happy ‘Scientologists’ worldwide. Unfortunately, in the adult world of quantifiable reality, the best available estimates from reliable sources (including French, Belgian and German government agencies) reveal that the overwhelming majority of persons who are deceived into buying into this self-gratifying group-delusion, abandon ‘Scientology’ within a short time (without complaint), and that there are probably less than 50 000 long-term believers around the world. That said, during the previous 12 months, the numbers of new customers being caught up in the ‘Scientology’ snowball have been in steep decline due to the energetic activities of a youthful protest movement known as ‘Anonymous.’ Ironically, this peaceful group only came into existence as a reaction to ‘Scientology’s’ leaders’ arrogant efforts to control all information about their activities on the Internet. Needless to say, the closed-logic ‘Scientology’ myth systematically categorizes all free-thinking individuals challenging its authenticity as ‘Suppressives’, ‘criminals’ , ‘ terrorists’, etc.


The author of the ‘Scientology’ myth, and its first self-appointed sovereign leader, was Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (b. March 11th 1911 - d. January 26th 1986), a.k.a. ‘Brother Ron’ a.k.a. ‘LRH’ a.k.a. Ron ‘Flash’ Hubbard a.k.a. ‘Captain’ Hubbard a.k.a. ‘Commodore’ Hubbard a.k.a. ‘Admiral’ Hubbard a.k.a. ‘Doctor’ Hubbard a.k.a. ‘Commander in Chief of the Sea Org’ etc., a US Naval Reserve veteran, amateur hypnotist and prolific writer of pulp-fiction. Although all the quantifiable evidence proves Hubbard to have been nothing more than a penniless narcissist turned multi-millionaire charlatan, who ultimately withdrew into a progressively-paranoid, drug, and alcohol, fuelled delusion (spending his final years in hiding to avoid being held to account by agents of the US Internal Revenue Service), for more than half a century, the full explanation of his activities has been occulted by his own reality-inverting script of:

‘Adventurer’; ‘Explorer’; ‘Pilot’; ‘Navigator’; ‘Best Selling Author/Screenwriter’; ‘Philosopher’; ‘Scholar’, ‘Researcher’; ‘Mathematician’; ‘Linguist’; ‘Geologist’; ‘Engineer’, ‘Nuclear Physicist’; ‘War Hero’; ‘Inventor’; ‘Philanthropist’; ‘Psychiatric Therapist’; ‘Dianetics’ (‘the Modern Science of Mental Health’); ‘AD’ (‘After Dianetics’); ‘Dianeticists’; ‘New Era Dianetics’; ‘Franchising’; ‘Research’; ‘New Science’; ‘Science of Certainty’; ‘Science of Survival’; ‘Auditing’; ‘Auditing Level’; ‘Processing’; ‘Training’; ‘Analytical Mind’; ‘Reactive Mind’; ‘Pre-Clears’; ‘Clears’; ‘Clear Certainty Rundown’; ‘Sunshine Rundown’; ‘Hubbard Dianetic Auditor’s Certificate’; ‘Journal of Scientology’; ‘Electropsychometric Auditing’; ‘E-Meter’; ‘Personality Test’; ‘Communications Courses’; ‘Introspection’; ‘Religion’; ‘Sacred Scriptures’; ‘Ministers’; ‘Thetan’; ‘BT’ (‘Body Thetan’); ‘OT’ (‘Operating Thetan’); ‘GE’ (‘Genetic Entity’); ‘PTS’ (‘Potential Trouble Source’); ‘Missions’; ‘Fixed Donations’; ‘Diagnosis’; ‘Healing’; ‘Helping Mankind’; ‘Check-List’; ‘Returning Down the Time Track’; ‘Reincarnation’; ‘Engrams’; ‘Truth’; ‘Freedom’; ‘Self-Determination’; ‘Moving up the Bridge to Total Freedom’; ‘Code of Ethics’; ‘Ethics Technology’; ‘Ethics Officers’; ‘Justice’; ‘Human Rights’; ‘Evolution Theory’; ‘Education’; ‘Briefing Course’; ‘Self-Betterment’; ‘Cybernetics’; ‘Engineering Technology’; ‘Radiation’; ‘Modern Management Technology’; ‘Celebrity Centers’; ‘Spiritual Guidance Centers’; ‘Purification’; ‘Saunas’; ‘Oils’; ‘Vitamins’; ‘Minerals’; ‘position against Drugs’; ‘position against Alcohol’; ‘position against Satanism’; ‘position against Cults’; ‘Messengers’; ‘HCO’ (‘Hubbard Communications Office’); ‘CS’ (‘Case Supervisor’); ‘DSA’ (‘Department of Special Affairs’); ‘SZP’ (‘Special Zone Plan’); ‘DGA’ (‘Department of Government Affairs’); ‘Sea Project’; ‘Flag Land-Base’; ‘Guardian's Office’; ‘Orgs’ (‘Organizations’); ‘Sea Org’; ‘Cine Org’; ‘Organizing Board’; ‘Crimes’; ‘Punishment’; ‘Suppressive Acts’; ‘SP’ (‘Suppressive Persons’); ‘Fair Game Policy’; ‘Billion Year Contracts’; ‘Black Propaganda’; ‘Treason’; ‘Isolation Watch’; ‘RPF’ (‘Rehabilitation Project Force’); ‘EOC’ (‘End of Cycle’); ‘Conspiracy’; etc.


Throughout most of his life, Hubbard steadfastly pretended moral and intellectual authority - going to the most extraordinary lengths to maintain an absolute monopoly of information about himself - whilst perpetrating, and sanctioning, a series of evermore serious crimes. The unconditional deference of his deluded core-adherents only served to confirm, and magnify, his own paranoid delusions. When his kingdom was threatened, Hubbard sustained his activities by the imposition of arbitrary codes and contracts (secrecy, denunciation, confession, justice, punishment, etc.) on his subjects, and by the use of humiliation, intimidation, calumny, malicious prosecution (where he posed as victim), sophism, the infiltration of traditional culture, corruption, intelligence gathering and blackmail, extortion, physical isolation, violence, etc; to repress any internal or external dissent. It was Hubbard and latterly his heir, David Miscavige (b. 1960), who organized the creation, dissolution and subversion of all manner of further (apparently independent) corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, activities to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and isolate themselves from liability. In this way, the ‘Scientology’ myth has infiltrated traditional culture to a degree almost without parallel in the sordid Pantheon of modern-day cultism. Sadly, an alarming number of unthinking observers (not just in the media, but also in law enforcement, and in the religious, and political, establishment) have swallowed L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘religious’ bait and insisted that his totalitarian fiction has every right to be peddled as fact.


Copyright David Brear June 2009
(the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings)

Are Pernicous World Cults Like Amway a Legitimate Career Path?

Amway is a detestable world cult. Of course, Amway apologists continue to deny Amway's status as a cult, preferring to maintain that Amway is merely a commercial entity. These denials describe the delusion and utter state of ignorance the Amway cult adherents are expected to mentally exist within--all to their own ultimate undoing!

The Amway cult initiators (DeVos - Van Andel) have always sought to control the means of Amway production and distribution--all so very much like past failed Orwellian totalitarian states. David Brear's examination of historical totalitarian states helps shine light into the dark chambers of the Amway Labyrinth, inhabited by Amway apologists like 'Jack and Jill' (IBOFightBack and Bridgett Baron), both deniers of the 'Amway financial holocaust.' The Amway Labyrinth has been illuminated by QCI contributor David Brear's own keen insight which promotes a more complete understanding of how the Amway world cult operates.

I realize that people might consider joining one of the world cults (Amway, Scientology, or the Moonies) as a potential avenue for advancement, where just belonging places the cult believer in a position to receive the prosperity 'pay off' promised by the cultic kingpin leaders. This willingness helps explain why cult adherents are willing to expend so much of their personal time and thousands of dollars in Amway's closed market swindle? People are indeed 'bamboozled' enough by cult rhetoric into joining the likes of Amway's world cult as a personal 'meal ticket' to 'easy street'? Aren't they really taking a greed inspired journey through the dark-side of the Amway Labyrinth? A place where the the cult adherent's dreams are exploited instead! A place where perversions of faith exist; where the worship of human 'upline' deities is practiced and encouraged.

Possibly there are those who believe joining the likes of Scientology, who number actor Tom Cruise as a member, to be another great career path? Or who might think joining with the Rev. Sun Yung Moon to be a great career option as well?

Richard Devos and the late Jay Van Andel take their legitimate place next to the late L. Ron Hubbard and the Rev. Moon as initiators of the three dominant world cults. These cults universally have sought to buy favor with the United States government through its elected officials, specifically through elected members of the Republican party. Those whose job it is to protect the interests of the American people, like the FTC have allowed these world cults to prey on the American people themselves and to subvert our very government, to the shame of us all.

The Amway World Cult offers adherents a spiritualistic path that actually has little to do with any type of legitimate commercial entity. The Amway 'the business cult' is far removed from traditionally accepted businesses which seek to offer their goods and/or services on a free and open market; Amway operates a monopolistic 'closed market fraud' where the cult adherents are the only legitimate customers for Amway's otherwise unsellable (overpriced) mundane goods. I must point out that Amway is in so many ways comparable to the mafia, and the con it is pulling off by far and away dwarfs Bernie Madoff's Ponzi investment scheme.

Believers in the Amway 'bidnez' are the 'fleeced flock' of captivated suckers in the greatest bait and switch con game ever to be devised or played out on a world stage.

David Brear points out how truly un-original cults are and makes it obvious how they can be more readily understood by an examination of Orwell, history and other failed totalitarian movements like Soviet Russia. In other words, the Amway cult initiators in the United States operate their own version of a totalitarian state and are indeed 'a dangerous power unto themselves' throughout the world. They seek to swindle the likes of the Communist Chinese as well as India--the world's largest democracy, and to subvert the interests of the American people foolish enough to fall for their MLM con. Again, nothing new here as the Costa Nostra mafia has operated world wide for much longer.

Mysticism plays a big part in any cult and is present in Amway's 'puritanical' quasi-religious pulpit. Mysticism, a belief in myths, then serves as the adhesive which dominates the cult follower's thinking and helps bind him or her to the cult. Manipulative mind control is almost universally exerted by all cults, where the altering of the adherent's mind-set becomes chief objective of cultic kingpins whom the adherents are taught to emulate. Indeed the Amway world cult can be defined by its emphasis on recruitment of new adherents, a defining element of all three world cults.

It is possible to draw many distinct similarities between the triumvirate of world cults, all of which aids in understanding their pernicious (harm doing) nature. The pernicious 'harm doing' nature of cults comes from the exploitation of their own cult adherents. The new Amway prospect is soon introduced to the 'tool scam' and the truly maddening Amway psycho-babble rhetoric. Isn't it significant that Amway itself denies being a cult, thus making their denial one of their most successful of reality inverting myths?

Washington Sex Scandals Recalled as Amway Global Launches PR Exploitation of College Interns

Recent blog posts by 'Amway' employee (paid) bloggers out of 'Amway' headquarters in Ada, Michigan have recently sought to attract readers to a series of posts titled 'Interns Expose Amway.'

Wow!

Isn't this really just an 'over the top' PR ploy, an obvious exploitation of 'college interns' which invokes memories of past scandals all involving interns or congressional pages? Who cannot recall Monica Lewinski, poster child for the exploited college intern?

Of course, not to be outdone, any number of Republicans have participated in their own sex scandals; Mark Foley being engaged in gay trists with congressional pages as just one example of numerous scandals involving exploited interns or pages. Not to be outdone, the wizards of PR at Amway Global have also entered the fray and are exploiting their own group of college interns as well. And to think that they really don't have to pay them either is simply insane, funny and ironic! (snicker, snicker)

Interns Expose Amway

The title alone of Amway's PR stunt is an obvious ploy to attract potential 'bamboozled' prospects of their so called business 'opportunity.' The Amway PR geniuses realize that attracting people, who might happen to be looking for any 'hint of scandal' in the Amway 'prosperity plan, might just land on their mushy reality inverting rose smelling 'scamway' 'opportunity zone,' portal to worldly riches in the Amscam bidnez, instead of--let's say?--Scott Larsen's AmQuix pages, the largest collection of information which reveals 'the dark-side' of Amway and the hypocracy of their motivational 'cultic' leaders--especially the likes of Dexter Yager and Doug Wead.

Amway hopes that prospects lured to inspect their 'Interns Expose Amway' and will come away all starry eyed, ready to be led down the primrose path author David Brear describes as the stairs leading to the Amway Labrynith, a crypt full of myth and misery, bunker of Amway apologists also sometimes known as AmBots!

What Could They Have Been Thinking?

Tex, a.k.a. Scott Johnson, Amway apologist, and longtime 'tool scam' critic of Amway's motivational organizations, has also correctly asked 'Amway' (Ada):

"What Were You Thinking?"

Amway, while disregarding and down playing the Tool Scam—-thereby allowing a secondary 'closed market swindle' to operate—-now has the audacity to promote their 'People's Business' by invoking and exploiting of all things, 'impressionable' and 'exploitable' youthful interns!'

Why does Bill Clinton keep coming to mind here?

What a blunder, all within a Utopian totalitarian 'organization' masquerading as a now legit business which has been well known for substantial historical blunders (like the fraud committed against the dignity of the Canadian people) all very similar to the 'Three Stooges-like' Orwellian North Korean totalitarian state's recent 'successful' launch of a communications satellite into orbit?

Robin Luymes, "my gawd man! What's going on up there in Michigan?" The air can't be that rarefied, or is everyone in the Amway PR department smoking crack with the interns, or worse?

Human exploitation in the 'Amway' the business cult is not uncommon. 'Amway' is neither new or unique. Orwellian Utopian states have been accurately described by others. Don't allow yourself to join the ranks of the Amway 'exploited' and 'taken'.

quixtarisacult

'Amway's' Totalitarian Model of Reality

by QCI contributor David Brear:

________________________________

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’


George Orwell (1903-1950)

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All cosmopolitan people accept that North Korea is just about the last, stale bastion of ‘Soviet’-style totalitarianism camouflaged as ‘Communism.’ After the fall of the ‘Soviet’ empire and radical reforms in China, N. Korea could no longer rely on unrestricted access to cut-price raw materials and a guaranteed market for its (otherwise) unsaleable produce. From the mid-1990s, a series of natural disasters devastated agriculture and the highly-secretive State (which is presented externally as a ‘Democratic People’s Republic’) suddenly became obliged (in the face of mass-starvation) to accept international food aid in return for undertaking not to develop weapons of mass-destruction. Although some Chinese-style economic reforms have recently made an appearance, N. Korea remains (effectively) isolated from the outside world. In reality, it is an Orwellian one-party State with inadequate, narcissistic leaders who have attempted to bury the appalling consequences of their crimes and make sure that they cannot be held to account. In a last-ditch attempt to stimulate the failing economy and hold onto power, they have propagated a typically paranoid myth that the homeland is about to be again overrun by aggressive, American-backed, capitalist hordes from S. Korea. The leaders have exploited their subjects’ resulting fear and hatred of outsiders as the false justification for committing virtually 100% of remaining national resources to maintaining the fourth largest standing army on the planet; dissidents are brutally repressed and many subjects have fled to avoid forced military service, imprisonment, assassination or starvation.


Since 1994, N. Korea has been ruled by an absurd, but nonetheless dangerous, dictator, Kim Jong-il (b. 1941), who styles himself as the ‘Dear Leader’ or ‘Dear Father,’ but he might as well call himself ‘Big Brother.’ According to the bleating flock of well-fed apparatchiks at the N. Korean Ministry of Truth (arbitrarily defined as ‘News Agency KCNA’):

By the universal desire of his beloved people, the ‘Dear Leader,’ continues selflessly to build a secure Utopian future of prosperity, freedom and happiness for all.

On April 5th 2009, ‘KCNA’ made the following announcement:

‘Scientists and technicians of the Democratic People’s Republic of N. Korea succeeded in putting an experimental communications satellite, Kwangyongsong-2, into orbit by means of carrier rocker, Unha-2, as part of the State’s long-term plan for outer-space development.’

Although this event was almost certainly the (failed) test-firing of a intercontinental ballistic missile (which violated the existing weapons agreement and led to an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council), over the next few days, the ruling N. Korean regime steadfastly pretended that the news of a successful satellite launch had been enthusiastically welcomed by the international community and that Kim Jong-il had personally received congratulations from fellow World leaders, including the Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Apparently, the North Korean leadership has not yet (officially) informed the Korean people of the fall of the ‘Soviet’ empire.


By physical isolation, and/or by constantly denigrating all external sources of information whilst constantly repeating reality-inverting key words and images, the self-proclaimed Communist Prophets of Plenty, who comprise the N. Korean ‘Politburo,’ have sought to maintain an absolute monopoly of information, and, thus, modify the individual personalities and behaviour of their subjects. For decades, the State has been controlled by a form of ‘political religion’ – based on a fictitious dualistic scenario reflected as fact, in which North Korea alone represents a positive or protective force of purity and absolute righteousness derived from the leadership’s access to a superior knowledge. Therefore, according to the same closed-logic of the puerile two-dimensional narrative, N. Koreans alone oppose a negative or adversarial force of impurity and absolute evil.


The above, in essence, is the inverted ‘us v. them’ model of reality lurking behind all cultic groups and totalitarian regimes (no matter how deceptive their external camouflage).


In a previous article about ‘Jim’ and Tammy-Faye Bakker, I explained that in the Bible, a story is told of Jesus and his Disciples feeding 5000 people with just a handful of loaves and fishes, and of basketfuls of leftovers being gathered after the feast. However, it is important to understand that, in the biblical tale, all Jesus asks for in return, is unquestioning belief in ‘future redemption in Paradise.’ Should some sanctimonious performers (like the tear-jerking Bakker double-act) require of 5000 individuals the same unquestioning belief in ‘Jesus the Redeemer,’ but exploit their faith to extract $1000 per head entrance to ‘The Miracle Buffet,’ then they would gross $5 millions in a lunchtime. Since these self-proclaimed Capitalist Prophets of Plenty cannot possess the superhuman power to turn the finite into the infinite, then, by simple deduction, their activity can only be ‘advanced fee fraud’ (a form of theft). To the eternal shame of the United States, for half a century (and all around the globe), the De Vos and Van Andel clans, and their (apparently independent) associates, have (with the Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other) been allowed to get away with committing this, the most absurd, but nonetheless grotesque, of cultic crimes. Sadly the ‘Amway’ racket has reaped not just millions, but billions, of dollars for its instigators.


According to the bleating flock of well-fed apparatchiks at the ‘Amway’ Ministry of Truth:

The ‘Amway Corporation’ is a ‘Purely Commercial Organization’ offering a ‘Proven Business Opportunity,’ and any cultic dimension which might once have been present in its ‘Networks of Sponsorship’ was there without the approval of the ‘Amway Policy Board.’

Given the undisputed fact that (for 50 years) the ‘Amway’ myth has left a trail of debt, depression, dissociation, divorce and even death amongst its core-adherents, the following text becomes truly terrifying:

‘I’m convinced more and more each day that this (‘Amway’) business was God’s idea. What I’m saying is God created this (‘Amway’) business so that we could pull families together and help people — and the Devil does not like that! If you don’t believe there’s a Devil, go on the Internet! Man I’m telling you there’s a Devil! The Devil does not like this (‘Amway’) business! - He does not like the unity in this (‘Amway’) business! All I want to say to you is: guys, if I were the Devil and I saw a business that was keeping marriages together, where that men learned how to love their wife … they’re taught from stage in Leadership sessions how to love their wife … where women are taught how to really integrate the marriage … the husband and wife relationship … where parents are taught how to bring up their children and encourage them to speak life and positive things into them so that those children have good healthy self-images and believe that they can really do anything that they put their minds to do. If I saw a business that was responsible for holding those marriages and families together, and getting people out of debt, and learning how to treat people with dignity, respect and kindness … a business that gave people hope for freedom, hope for their financial future … that a person could not even succeed in this (‘Amway’) business without helping somebody else, and that the more people you help the more money you make… a business that teaches the principles of morals and ethics and integrity, that gives dignity to human life, that validates marriages an institution that should be reverenced that should not be put down or criticised or belittled .… If I saw a business that did all those things and so much more for humanity .… If I were the Devil, I’d hate it with a passion! And I am convinced that not only does Satan hate the Church, I’m convinced with all my heart that Satan has good reason for hating this (‘Amway’) business. He has good reason for hating Dexter and Birdie and every Leader in their organisation. Satan hates this (‘Amway’) business with a passion, because this (‘Amway’) business stands for everything he hates! And if you want to know whose behind those Websites, all I ask you is, who could it be… huh? … Could it be Satan?’

The above is a brief-extract of an intellectually, and emotionally, overwhelming sermon given (in 2001) by pastor Mark Gorman to a closed congregation of American ‘Amway’ core-adherents. The pastor’s typical, totalitarian tirade was taped, then re-recorded onto cheap imported cassettes and finally sold in the USA (at around 1000 % mark-up) as a ‘training tape’ entitled: ‘How to Handle Negative Websites.’ I recovered it from Eric Scheibeler who, in his book, ‘Merchants of Deception,’ explains (in great detail) how, over a period spanning 10 years, he was brainwashed into wasting many thousands of hours, and approximately $100 000, pursuing the ‘Amway Dream’ whilst collecting at least $4 millions for his ‘Network Leader,’ Dexter Yager.


Despite the pathetic protestations of ‘Amway’s’ handful of fanatical Internet apologists (led by David Steadson) that the ‘Amway Business’ is an innocent victim under attack from outrageous lies spread by a jealous minority of violently anti-capitalist lunatics who know nothing whatsoever about commerce or cultism, a veritable mountain of evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that a significant number of ‘Amway’ adherents have been gradually dissociated from external reality and programmed systematically to categorize all free-thinking individuals and any quantifiable evidence challenging the authenticity of the ‘Amway’ myth, as ‘Satanic.’ Tellingly, extreme cultic material has only been available to a tiny minority of transient ‘Amway’ believers. However, the highly-profitable recording (part-transcribed above), is only one of countless millions that have been produced and distributed around the globe by the ‘InterNet Services Corporation’ - an organization registered in the USA as a ‘privately-controlled limited-liability commercial company’ (apparently independent of ‘Amway’), but owned (on paper) by ‘Amway Diamond Distributor’, Dexter Yager - a former beer-delivery truck driver (from Rome, New York) turned self-proclaimed Capitalist Prophet of Plenty (residing in Charlotte, N. Carolina). In fact, the overwhelming majority of Yager’s (declared) multi-million dollar annual income has been proved (in court) to derive from his peddling grossly over-priced books, recordings and tickets to meetings; most of which reflect essentially the same, self-gratifying, dualistic fiction as fact: ‘Amway’ alone represents a positive or protective force of purity and absolute righteousness derived from its leaders’ access to a superior knowledge. Therefore, according to the same closed-logic of the puerile two-dimensional narrative, ‘Amway Distributors’ alone oppose a negative or adversarial force of impurity and absolute evil.


At this point, I should again like to mention former ‘White House Adviser’ (on the ‘Religious Right’ to the Bush administration), Doug Wead, who has recently found it necessary to post more, reality-inverting material on one of his own propaganda Blogs. This includes a particularly creepy contribution from David Steadson (via his cultic alter ego, ‘ibofightback’) in which I am falsely identified as being ‘the original source of incorrect stories’ regarding Wead and ‘Amway France.’ However, Steadson is incapable of specifically refuting any of the accurate and verifiable information published about Doug Wead, Dexter Yager and Jean Godzich. Instead, he merely seeks to denigrate me as ‘a well-known Amway critic.’ Tellingly, Wead still makes sure that the names of his close associate (and fugitive from French justice), Jean Godzich, and the counterfeit company, ‘le Groupement,’ do not feature on his own Blog. In his latest post, Wead casually recounts how he encountered his other close associate, Dexter Yager, and he then goes on to ‘explain’ Yager’s so-called ‘Tools Business.’ Now, if ever there was an American double-act who believed, with a conviction based upon experience, than you can fool all of the people all of the time, then it’s Wead and Yager. That said, in an circuitous attempt to avoid being held to account for his crimes, Wead now reveals that all the ‘best-selling’ books bearing the name Dexter Yager, weren’t actually written by Yager at all: they were penned by himself. After this amazing confession, Wead steadfastly pretends that when he first teamed up with Yager, around 30 years ago, and began to ghost-write all his wonderful life-changing tomes, it was on the understanding that absolutely no profit was being earned on them. Obviously, this is just a direct lie.


In reality, Wead and Yager (and others who I won’t list now) have conspired with the members of the De Vos and Van Andel clans to maintain a self-perpetuating esoteric ritual belief system (based on a perverse plagiarism of traditional Judaeo-Christian beliefs and those of Fraternal Secret Societies) in order to perpetrate, and occult, not only one of the most-pernicious premeditated closed-market swindles of all time, but also a secondary ‘advanced fee fraud’ of even more staggering proportions. Unfortunately for Wead and Yager, all their books and recordings cannot be buried. Any intellectually rigorous examination of this material reveals that it constantly repeats ‘Amway’s’ own reality-inverting key words and images. Indeed, much of it was specifically designed to propagate fear and hatred of ‘negative’ outsiders in order to dissociate the ‘Amway’ faithful from external reality. No matter what they steadfastly pretend to be the truth, all the quantifiable evidence proves that Wead and Yager have inflicted a battery of co-ordinated, devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion on countless persons around the globe. These techniques (which are designed to shut down individuals critical and evaluative faculties without their fully-informed consent) are common to all cultic groups and totalitarian regimes. Self-evidently, this is the explanation of why the likes of David Steadson continue to deny the ‘Amway’ financial holocaust in the face of overwhelming evidence. These people are deployable agents furthering the hidden criminal objectives of their leaders, completely dependent on a collective paranoid delusion of absolute moral and intellectual supremacy fundamental to the maintenance of their individual self-esteem/identity and related psychological function. In simple terms, ‘Amway’s’ most fanatical apologists have become incapable of accepting that they have been fooled by what is merely a game of make believe.


Given the wider evidence, that millions of dollars of graft have been accepted by certain Republican Members of Congress, and by the leadership of the Republican party, from the criminal authors of the ‘Amway’ myth (and from their heirs, spouses and criminal associates), this aspect of the affair alone should now be identified, and prosecuted, as one of the most far-reaching, and sustained, acts of organized corruption in American political history. As stated in my open letter to President Obama (posted on Inauguration Day 2009): In 2001, despite a glaring conflict of interest, President Bush appointed one of ‘Amway’s’ aggressive echelon of reality-denying attorneys, Timothy Muris, as Chairman of the ‘Federal Trade Commission.’ Muris then installed his chum, David Scheffman, as the ‘Chief Economist of the FTC.’ Scheffman also had an obvious conflict of interest, in that he had previously been paid to play the reality-denying role of ‘expert witness’ for an ‘Amway’ clone, ‘Equinox International.’ (In a civil lawsuit filed by the FTC, US government attorneys acting on behalf of the people had rightly claimed that ‘Equinox’ was a vast pyramid scam camouflaged by unsaleable products. Although the owners of ‘Equinox’ subsequently agreed to close their counterfeit >‘direct selling company’ an hand over millions of stolen dollars to dodge further investigation, Scheffman had delayed proceedings by steadfastly pretending that his paymasters’ activities were perfectly lawful, because they were identical to those of ‘Amway’).


It makes one wonder what duplicitous role Doug Wead played in subverting the democratic process. That said, considering the fact that their victims number tens of millions: What crime would it be appropriate to charge the arrogant ‘Amway’ racketeers with?


Since the tactics employed by the ‘Amway’ mob against their fellow citizens, and against the citizens of numerous allies of the USA, are undoubtedly those of psychological, and economic, warfare, then it would seem that there is very compelling case that charges of treason (as defined by the United States Constitution) should be brought, and without further delay. The new Obama administration undoubtedly has the wit, but does it have the courage and integrity to hold all the ‘Amway’ traitors, and their political stooges, fully to account? No matter what transpires, it will forever remain one of the sickest ironies of history that the United States of America, a nation born out of an enlightened rebellion against absolutism, should have poured trillions of tax dollars and the blood of hundreds of thousands of its finest citizens into keeping latter-day absolutism at bay in the 20th century, only have its elected leaders completely fail to recognize essentially the same cancer (albeit in heavy disguise) not just multiplying unchecked in the ‘Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,’ but also infecting the rest of the world. Sadly, ‘Amway’ is by no means unique.


What would the authors of the ‘United States Constitution’ have made of all of this?



Copyright David Brear April 2009

Just How Absurd and Dangerous is 'Amway'?

...by QCI contributing author, David Brear


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‘A lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.’


James Callaghan (1912-2005)

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Readers who are unfortunate enough to have come into contact with ‘Amway’s’ handful of fanatical Internet apologists know that their devious motto is:


Always attack, never defend!


At the same time, these financially-illiterate sophists (led by David Steadson a.k.a. ‘ibofightback’ a.k.a. ‘Insider’ etc.) invert reality by excluding all quantifiable evidence to the contrary whilst steadfastly pretending that the ‘Amway Business’ is an innocent victim under attack from outrageous lies spread by a jealous minority of violently anti-capitalist lunatics who know nothing whatsoever about commerce. In support of this typically-paranoid totalitarian fantasy, the apologists (who pose as independent) sneer arrogantly and wield reams of ‘statistics’ the origin of which can only be ‘Amway’s’ own bleating flock of reality-inverting apparatchiks. However, on closer inspection, this mystifying material turns out to be so absurd, that it almost beggars belief that anyone (outside the most-deluded of ‘Amway’s’ unquestioning adherents) can fall for it.


For decades, the ‘Amway’ Ministry of Truth has proudly proclaimed millions of ‘Independent Business Owners’ conducting billions of dollars of ‘Sales’ in dozens of countries. Yet, given the accepted, average annual drop-out rate (approximately 50%), it is possible to extrapolate that, in the adult world of quantifiable reality, tens of millions of aspiring ‘Amway Distributors’ have vanished down the years, to be replaced by an endless chain of wide-eyed would-be millionaires. Only a 1-2% core-group of claimed adherents have remained bedazzled for periods exceeding 5 years and, in the end, even they have abandoned all (false) hope of achieving future redemption in the (non-existent) ‘Amway’ Utopia. Informed readers will notice the remarkable similarity between this ridiculous, self-inflating ‘Amway’ propaganda and that of ‘Scientology.’ Tellingly, the parent ‘Amway Corp.’ (including its ever-expanding labyrinth of subsidiaries) has never voluntarily released any accurate, verifiable information as to what percentage of the organization’s (apparently impressive) global market has comprised authentic retail transactions (i.e. sales to persons who are not transient players of the ‘Amway’ game of make-believe). Sadly, it’s not just the ‘Amway’ faithful who have swallowed these sugar-coated lies. Despite having once paid a total of C$70 millions to avoid extradition and imprisonment for perpetrating the largest tax-fraud in Canadian legal history, the co-authors of the ‘Amway’ myth, Richard (‘Rich’) Marvin De Vos (b. March 4th. 1926) and Jay Van Andel (b. June 3rd. 1924. d. December 7th. 2004), and latterly their heirs, have been fêted as philanthropic billionaire-industrialists and exemplary Christian conservatives by an alarming number of casual observers in the international media and political, legal and religious establishment.


Back in the 1970s, when subjected to long-winded investigation by agents of the Federal Trade Commission (who had apparently twigged that the ‘Amway’ myth is a far too good to be true), it was discovered that ‘Amway’s’ so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ was, in fact, strangely familiar. Exactly like its Soviet namesake, ‘Amway’s’ own ‘Policy Board’/ Politburo (comprising members of the De Vos and Van Andel clans) held absolute control over the means of production, distribution and exchange. FTC agents also discovered that the price and quality of the ‘exclusive’ products being exchanged within ‘Amway’s’ Soviet-style command economy, were maintained in such a way as to render them (effectively) unsaleable on the open market. Contrary to what ‘Amway’s’ own reality-inverting apparatchiks and propaganda constantly repeated, the organization’s grinning proselytisers were about as far removed from being ‘Independent Business Owners’ as it was possible to get. They were de facto slave-recruiters indoctrinated unconsciously to accept the following fiction as fact and to exclude all free-thinking individuals and quantifiable evidence challenging its authenticity:


You can buy ‘Amway’ products at a ‘wholesale price’ and then ‘retail’ them to your social contacts at ‘30% profit.’ This ‘short-term strategy’ is fine for some, but, in the end, it’s a ‘waste of time.’ If you are really serious about making big money, there’s ‘no need to sell anything.’ You can ‘Follow a Proven, 2-5 year Business-Building Plan’ and consume a regular quantity of ‘Money-Saving Products’ yourself whilst offering your friends and relations a ‘Helping Hand’ by bringing them onboard. In turn, your recruits can ‘Duplicate Exactly the same Plan’ and consume a regular quantity of ‘Money-Saving Products’ themselves whilst ‘Helping’ their own social contacts to do the same, etc… as ‘Amway’ undertakes to pay its ‘Distributors’ a escalating percentage commission on the totality of their monthly ‘Business Volume’ and on that of their recruits, and on that of the recruits of their recruits, etc… if the ‘Business Building Plan’ is ‘Followed’ correctly, payments automatically multiply in an infinitely-expanding geometric progression. The more people you ‘Help:’ the more money you earn!


In simple terms, vulnerable Americans (who, for whatever personal reasons, needed to believe in the self-perpetuating and self-gratifying ‘Amway’ myth of ‘total financial freedom in 2-5 years’), were actually being peddled infinite shares in what could only be their own finite dollars. Since the centrally-controlled ‘Amway’ market was deliberately designed to produce no real external revenue, no matter how the cash in that hermetic system was divided by its all-powerful treasurers, it was a mathematical impossibility for the overwhelming majority of its powerless participants to receive a profit. The whole of ‘Amway’s’ fiercely complex ‘Compensation Plan’ was, therefore, nothing more than thought-stopping hocus-pocus, but the po-faced agents at the FTC apparently never fully-grasped how the trick was pulled.


Consequently, after 10 years of less-than-intellectually-rigorous FTC enquiries and hearings, ‘Amway’ was merely fined a derisory sum for ‘price-fixing,’ and its greedy rulers were not only allowed to keep their counterfeit company registered in the USA, but also to expand their counterfeit commercial activities overseas. This was because their attorneys steadfastly pretended affinity with the federal regulators and drafted a ‘rule’ which appeared to oblige ‘Amway’ agents to sell-on at least 70% of their own purchases to non-agents before they could qualify to receive commission payments. Interestingly, the US regulators can’t have been completely duped by this devious tactic, because they also compelled ‘Amway’s’ corporate officers to publish accurate and verifiable information about the actual derisory average levels of commission payments. Obviously, this part-regulation only applied in the USA (where ‘Amway’ recruitment took such a dramatic nose-dive that it eventually had to become ‘Quixtar’), whilst all the subsequent evidence proves that the ‘70% rule’ might as well not exist, because, unbelievably, the FTC omitted to introduce any independent instrument to enforce it, or to warn the regulatory authorities internationally of what had really been occurring in the USA. Thus, when ‘Amway’s’ counterfeit commercial activities were recently investigated in the UK, it was discovered that (just as in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s) the organization’s so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ was, in fact, still a ‘Soviet’-style command economy (centrally-controlled by the ‘Amway’ Politburo in the USA), and that the price and quality of the products being exchanged within it, were maintained in such a way as to render them (effectively) unsaleable on the open market. Approximately 96% (and possibly even more) of all ‘Amway UK’s’ claimed ‘Sales,’ were a puerile fiction. Over a period of 35 years, the secret, rolling failure-rate for powerless participants in the premeditated ‘Amway’ closed-market in the UK was (effectively) 100%. Yet again, contrary to what ‘Amway’s’ reality-inverting apparatchiks and propaganda constantly repeated, vulnerable British citizens were being peddled the same old Utopian fiction as fact. They were also being indoctrinated to exclude all free-thinking individuals and quantifiable evidence challenging its authenticity.


Mysteriously, senior civil servants in Britain’s Ministry for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (who, off the record, freely-accept that it is impossible to make money in ‘Amway’ and that its core-adherents are brainwashed pawns) chose only to challenge ‘Amway UK’ in the civil courts, rather than try to trigger a diplomatically-embarrassing, international criminal enquiry. However, Lawyers acting for the UK government, like their American counterparts, again failed to explain to both the UK High Court and the UK Appeal Court that, without external revenue (due to the deliberately banal quality and exorbitant pricing of products) ‘Amway’s’ so called ‘Business Model’ is fundamentally fraudulent and that the so-called ‘Compensation Plan’ is utter nonsense. This time, ‘Amway UK’ escaped closure by announcing the expulsion a couple of over-zealous ‘Diamond Distributors’ (including Jerry Scriven) as well as steadfastly pretending innocence and by promising to reform its future activities. However, the counterfeit company is now obliged to publish accurate and verifiable information about the actual, derisory, average levels of commission payments, and its current claimed ‘Distributor’ numbers have dropped to an almost insignificant level.


Unbeknown to the UK High Court and Appeal Court, the identical closed-market swindle was uncovered in France in the mid-1980s; when a minority of confused former ‘Amway’ core-adherents approached consumer, and cult, advice associations complaining of massive financial losses and dissociation from their friends and families. At that time, ‘Amway’ dodged official investigation in France by announcing the expulsion of an over-zealous ‘Diamond Distributor,’ Jean Godzich, and around 80 other over-zealous ‘Distributors,’ for breaking the ‘Amway Code of Ethics.’ The company then steadfastly pretended innocence and promised to reform its future activities, but its claimed numbers of ‘Distributors’ fell from ‘90 000’ to less than ‘5000.’ Godzich went on to operate the identical close-market swindle, complete with (effectively) unsaleable products and a ‘Code of Ethics,’ using a mystifying labyrinth of corporate structures labelled, ‘le Groupement,’ before his re-branded, counterfeit commercial activities were challenged.


In the early 1990s, a complaint was filed against ‘le Groupement’ by a government-funded, French, cult advice group, ‘UNADFI’ (National Union of Associations for the Defence of the Family and the Individual), in conjunction with a consumer advice association, the Women’s Social and Civic Union, on behalf of around 300 destitute former core-adherents. This led to a police enquiry. A French parliamentary report soon revealed that more telephone enquiries (almost 1000 per year) were being made to UNADFI about ‘le Groupement,’ than about ‘Scientology.’ Godzich and 12 associates steadfastly protested their innocence, but they were eventually charged with operating a pyramid scam. In the mean time, the counterfeit company was successfully sued in the civil courts by its victims, but its declared assets were insufficient to pay its debts. ‘Groupement’ was bankrupted and compulsorily wound-up in 1995. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Jean Godzich, but he had already escaped to the USA with a large amount of cash. At this time, approximately 1500 deeply-deluded core-adherents picketed the offices of UNADFI in Paris. The building was occupied, files stolen and a senior UNADFI volunteer, Mathieu Cossu, was held prisoner for several hours and obliged to make a video statement that ‘le Groupement was not a cult.’ Prior to this Jean Godzich had tried to give UNADFI a donation one million French francs (approximately 160 000 Euros). When this blatant bribe was refused, Jean Godzich financed the creation of an (apparently independent) ‘anti-mental manipulation association.’ It was generally believed by paranoid core-adherents that Groupement was the victim of an anti-capitalist conspiracy and that UNADFI was a form of extreme-socialist cult itself.


Some of the other tactics used by Godzich to try to maintain his absolute monopoly of information in France were classics of a cultic movement. A code of silence was introduced along with an internal system of dispute resolution to discourage more dissidents from coming forward. Malicious lawsuits were filed against all external critics in which Godzich posed as victim. Traditional culture was infiltrated via gifts to charity, sponsorship of sport, etc.


The criminal case against Jean Godzich (in absentia) and his associates, didn’t come to trial until the Summer of 2000. At this time, no evidence was presented by the prosecution relating to the much larger ‘advanced fee fraud’ hiding behind ‘le Groupement,’ and the pyramid fraud charge was dropped on technicalities. Amazingly, French law recognizes counterfeit ‘investment schemes’ (or Ponzi schemes) without external revenue or profits to divide, but it does not yet accept that counterfeit ‘marketing schemes’ without external revenue or profits to divide are just a more-sustainable variation of essentially the same crime. However, in January 2007, Jean Godzich received a custodial prison sentence (by default) of 3 years from the Correctional Tribunal of Evreux (Dept. of Eure, Normandy), for illegally transferring around 6 millions Euros of his French-registered company’s social funds to the USA (prior to its compulsory closure in 1995). An international arrest warrant was issued for Godzich (a citizen of both France and the USA) and he was given an additional fine of 500 000 Euros for failing to turn up for his trial in October 2006. Three of his former associates were given suspended prison sentences ranging from 8 months to 2 years along with fines ranging from 10 000 to 80 000 Euros.


At this point, I should like to mention former White House Adviser (on the ‘Religious Right’ to the Bush administration), Doug Wead, who has recently found it necessary to post reality-inverting material on one of his own propaganda Blogs, in which he begins to refer to the Godzich/‘Groupement’ affair, but, tellingly, not by name. In fact, Wead’s propaganda (like that of ‘Amway’s’ instigators) is far more interesting from the point of view of what is excluded rather than what is included. That said, Wead casually acknowledges that he was once an ‘Amway Diamond Distributor’ and that he remains a ‘friend’ of Dexter Yager. However, he steadfastly pretends to be an innocent victim under attack from lies posted by ‘Amway critics’ on the Net. Apparently, it has been suggested (by certain ‘critics’) that Wead helped set up ‘Amway’ and then ‘le Groupement’ in France, and that a warrant was issued for his arrest in France. I should like to set the record straight. Although it is true to say that Wead’s name never appeared on any of the incorporation documents of the counterfeit companies that comprised the French chapter of the ‘Amway/Groupement’ myth, his name did feature on countless books, magazines and recordings sold to hundreds of thousands of ‘Amway’ and ‘Groupement’ victims in France (first during the 1980s and then during the 1990s). He even co-authored books with Dexter Yager and Jean Godzich. Wead was also a regular paid-speaker at ‘Groupement’ mass-rallies. Wead was undoubtedly a major beneficiary of a conspiracy to commit, and occult, an ‘advanced fee fraud’ using a mystifying labyrinth of ever-expanding and changing (apparently independent) corporate structures designed to prevent, and/or divert, investigation and isolate beneficiaries like himself from liability. Just as in the UK, it was Wead’s acknowledged ‘friend,’ Dexter Yager, who received the lion’s share of the illicit cash. Whether, he was the final beneficiary, is still a matter of conjecture. Yager led the ‘Amway Network’ of which Godzich and Wead were members. Yager continued to supply the identical books and recordings to Godzich, even after he’d been publicly expelled from ‘Amway France.’ These fraudulent materials were French translations produced by Canadian companies controlled by Yager. In the mid-1990s, French network television journalists traced Jean Godzich to Phoenix Arizona, where they discovered that he and Wead shared an office and that they were both regular ‘Prosperity Gospel Preachers’ at the ‘First Assembly of God.’ During a 10 year period, thousands of deluded core-‘Groupement’ adherents had been peddled grossly-over-priced tickets to visit Phoenix via a Belgian-registered travel agency owned (on paper) by Godzich and his (then) wife. These individuals had received full-immersion baptism into the ‘First Assembly of God’ from Jean Godzich’s brother, Pastor Leo Mark Godzich. The sinister ceremonies were caught on film by hidden cameras, but (when interviewed by a French television journalist) Godzich steadfastly denied their existence.


Given their track records, one would have to be pretty naïve, and/or dim, to believe anything that Messrs. Yager, Godzich or Wead has to say on any subject, let alone ‘Multilevel Marketing.’ Interestingly, Wead now claims to have long-since retired from ‘Amway’ to become a ‘best-selling author and American historian’ However, if by ‘historian,’ Wead means someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then, in respect of ‘Amway,’ he is not a historian. However, Wead is not just another pathetic little narcissist (like David Steadson), steadfastly denying the ‘Amway’ financial holocaust - he’s one of the shameless racketeers responsible for it.


As stated in a previous article, two High Court Judges in the world’s largest democracy have already deduced that what purports to be the ‘World’s Largest Direct Selling Company,’ is actually a global fraud. Exactly the same alarming evidence has been uncovered in India as was found in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s, in France in the 1980s and 1990s and in the UK at the beginning of the 21st. century. Confused Indian victims have come forward to complain of massive financial losses coupled with dissociation from friends and family. However, on this occasion, although all the usual devious tactics are being pursued by the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’, and their aggressive echelon of attorneys, in a desperate attempt to maintain their paymasters’ absolute monopoly of information (including the issuing of two malicious, High Court writs to block a police investigation), Chief Justice C.S. Singhvi, and Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy, of the High Court of Judicature, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, have concluded that ‘Amway’s’ so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Scheme’ is in breach of well-conceived, Indian legislation (dating from the 1970s) which bans all ‘money circulation schemes,’ no matter how ingeniously they are disguised. The High Court has ordered that the Hyderabad Criminal Investigation Dept. should be allowed to continue to follow whatever procedures are permitted by Indian law to hold the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ to account.


Currently (just as in Britain and France in the recent past), the sanctimonious little gang of Bible-thumping, US-based charlatans behind the ‘Amway’ myth remain out of reach of the Indian authorities. It is to be hoped that the new Obama administration will not permit this pernicious international racket to continue for much longer.



Copyright David Brear April 2009

Amway Seeks to Swindle Chinese Communists Just Like Their Past North American Cult Adherents!

In past posts, British author David Brear has revealed that Amway has operated a fraud in the United Kingdom. Significantly, another blogger in India, Shyam Sundar, has been operating his Corporate Frauds Watch blog to warn his fellow man against the Amway menace. Shyam, a retired journalist, has recently weathered a storm of Amway apologist criticism to include the 'Swedish Swindler', IBOfightback and one very confused 'Tex.' Why are the Amway apologists alarmed about what has been going on in India?

Might it be the two Indian high court justices that have determined in a majority opinion that Amway is in violation of India's 'Prize Chit Money Circulation' law?

As I have reported before, Amway can be arrested in India, the world's largest democracy. I point out that prize chit and money circulating schemes are more commonly described as laws against pyramid schemes in the United States, as well as many other countries.

Amway is reporting that it hopes to improve their Chinese take by 10% in 2009. Of course this public relations propaganda hopes to cloak Amway's true intentions in the Communist world. Amway significantly benefits by...

...what is not known about their American swindle in China!

What Amway Chinese prospects may not significantly know or understand is how Amway historically has 'taken', i.e. swindled, foolish north-American believers in the past. Amway can spin the same deceptive success dream they used successfully to swindle former American adherents--all now quietly blaming themselves for being foolish enough to be taken by Amway.

The DeVos - Van Andel cult initiators have propelled themselves into being very wealthy 'supposed respectable businessmen', who are determined to carry their American Scam to a whole new generation, a world of people, all mostly ignorant of Amway's prior method of operandi in North America. They seek to hide their current state of 'financial holocaust' committed 'stateside' from a globe of billions of prospective new victims. David Brear states that the Ada cult swindlers should be held as traitors of the United States, besmirching the true American way of the American people with their mythical version of a Utopian state, all very similar to another right wing American organization of the Twentieth Century, the Ku Klux Klan--save the lynchings.

The 'American Way' intends to swindle as many naive Communistic men and women as they possibly can introduce their 'shell game-like' swindle.

Significant differences in the Chinese language, as well as very limited access to information via the Internet--all very conveniently blocked by the Communist Party rulers. Amway therefore has a vast, truly gullible Chinese market to exploit. Chinese pawns, mostly lacking in even the most rudimentary knowledge of Amway's vehicle history report, allows the Amway world cult to take full advantage of what I describe as Amway cultic proselytizers 'shooting Chinese fish in a barrel!' Just as David Brear paints a picture of a Amway Trojan horse being delivered up behind the 'city walls' of India; Amway under the guise of 'free enterprise' has parked their 'closed market' monolithic Trojan swindle in Communist China in like fashion. China, not a bastion of freedom by any measure, now all part of the American Way, the American Scam, all with never a single shot being fired.

India sits on the door step of the East and significantly provides some hope that the Chinese Communists will also take notice of what Amway represents in their country. Amway seeks to promote their 'closed market swindle' as a great success, an incredible reality inverting myth; all while the Chinese prospects remain ignorant of what kind of disreputable affair Amway has historically been in the United States and Canada.

To highlight how Amway presents Chinese adherents an incredible get rich opportunity, one that cannot possibly be missed, are the recent Amway junket-like cruises to Taiwan; yes, Taiwan, a bastion of free enterprise, an island which the Chinese Communists have coveted for decades and still significantly desire to possess through potential military force.

Recently I spoke with an exchange student from Taiwan at a wedding reception:

He described Taiwan as basically living under the constant threat of the Chinese Communists. Fear is rampant; Taiwanese freedom is always under threat.

Amway, obviously in 'good relation' with the Communist Regime, has been allowed to sponsor 'junkets' of 'mainland' Amway Chinese 'employees' to visit Taiwan; all a propagandised affair that the Communists and Amway China significantly exploit. Both Amway and Chinese Communists benefit while the interests of the free world are disregarded. What a sad state for 'the American Way' to fall into! Promoting their swindle along side of a Communist regime who seek to bring Taiwan under their rule by force if possible. How very quickly we Americans forget what past Communist Regimes in China have traditionally represented to the United States. Amway apologists disregard how China is diverting such a high percentage of their GNP into armaments and how they maintain one of the worlds largest standing armies, all a very real threat to the only 'American way' I recognize, and my American Way has nothing to do with Amway world cult swindlers operating their primary swindle now with the Chinese Communists!

Wisconsin Moves to Protect Citizens From the Traveling Sales Crew Menace on 10th Year Anniversary of Janesville Tragedy

Janesville Traveling Sales Crew 10 Year Memorial Anniversary




The Associated Press is reporting that Wisconsin lawmakers yesterday “approved the nation's toughest regulations on companies that use traveling crews to sell magazines, soap and other items." For the AP story, click here.

Quixtar Cult Intervention blog readers will recall that I have been an advocate for the passage of this law and have written several blog posts on the topic for which I will provide links at the bottom of this post.

The law, 'Malinda's Law', the nation's first and toughest of its kind seeks to reign in the ‘independent contractor’ loophole which has allowed those who profit from their classless swindles to escape accountability by shifting blame onto those whom they have been exploiting in the first place!

'The door knocking and the direct selling industries shall never be perceived as the same again.'

During the struggle to have Malinda's law passed, a massive amount of information was garnered about how corruption and exploitation intersected at some pretty strange roads. A world of scoundrels was exposed by one man who compiled what became a horror story much too strange to be believed--at least at first. Phil Ellenbecker, from Verona, Wisconsin, is a modern day every man's hero, seeing a wrong and taking action to protect his fellow citizens from victimization through law; succeeding at least in his first step. This writer desires that a similar law be invoke on the federal level. Wisconsin is a great start, but Phil Ellenbecker has said these low life affairs will seek out all the other states, like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and the like to continue their exploitation. Enough is enough. I support the proposed legislation which Wisconsin most likely will present in Washington, and may Mr. Ellenbecker celebrate another victory.

Today, March 25, is the decade anniversary of the fatal traveling sales crew accident that took the life of Phil Ellenbecker's daughter. The governor of Wisconsin will sign Malinda's Law into effect 10 years, 1 day after the Janesville, Wisconsin tragedy.

Rest in peace dear Malinda.

You will forever be in the hearts of the people who've come together in your cause. The love a father has in his heart is the greatest love of all. I can speak from first hand experience from a very recent incident involving my own dear son.

It has only been a few short months since the tragedy near South Bend, Indiana which took the lives of four Amway sales people, friends traveling home from an Amway business gathering. This was an accident, which much like the Janesville, Wisconsin accident, really didn't have to happen. Strangely enough, some of the news articles appearing about the crash describe the youths as 'Amway employees', something Amway would deny. Under Malinda's law these youth would be considered Amway employees, not mere independent contractors, which allows Amway to shirk any responsibilities. May these more recent victims of exploitation also rest in peace.

Significantly enough, traveling together for the selling of 'business opportunities' in Wisconsin was not excluded by amendment, and those non-related Amway registered distributors, 2 or more traveling to sell 'business opportunities' therefore must abide by the Wisconsin laws. Amway cannot represent these youths as 'independents' and just shrug off deaths, potential tragedies as the 'independents' own doing. These costs can now be those of Amway, who may no longer be able to cling to their 'independents' major loop hole in U.S. state and federal law. No longer may any of the other sundry MLM 'snake oil like' supposed direct sellers be able to shirk responsibility toward those who produce their profits--usually at the loss of their own exploited people, all part of the dark side of the direct selling industry.

Amway, in a reality inverting conundrum has always presented themselves to governmental regulators and in the the most recent commercials, as direct sellers, and significantly, potentially of the door to door variety, no different than the run of the mill Bible and snake oil salesmen of the past.

Regardless of how each of these companies operate their particular swindles, if they are part of the door to door selling industry--as they claim to be--then all 'traveling swindles on wheels' like theirs will be regulated by Wisconsin. Rather ironic for Amway I must admit, since they only use direct selling, door to door propaganda as a cover for their advanced fee fraud, which operates more like a common swindle than a blind call type sale. The language of Malinda's law defines traveling to sell 'business opportunities' invokes the protections of the law. Considering what this represents, the declarations, the back ground checks, and the bonding assurances guaranteeing 'employees' pay, as well as inspection of transportation, possibly the car loads of scoundrels touting swindles might reconsider their activities?

It is not unusual for Amway salespeople to travel as many as six to a car 'to tout their business opportunites' in successive locations. One such trip I have first hand knowledge involved 6 unrelated Amway salesmen traveling from southern California into Mexico to sell their 'business opportunities' out of country. Had these fellows been traveling to show their 'business opportunities' in Wisconsin, they would have been in violation of the tenants and protections of the new Wisconsin law, which describes their presence as those of Amway doing business in the state. These traveling salesmen are considered 'employees' of Amway, and the law being designed to protect their significant rights.

Amway, has described their scheme as a direct selling business, which can be sold door to door. Now, isn't it ironic that they should deny that they come under the broad 'brush' of Malinda's Law? The door to door selling part of their propaganda, clearly a con job on governmental regulators and a gullible citizenry, do invoke the protections of Wisconsin's law. The recent highway tragedy near South Bend, Indiana points out how Wisconsin's law has the potential to protect youths, who actually WILL BE considered Amway employees. How existential. Their exploitation being curbed by law. After all these youths risk their very lives to show Amway's business opportunities on the road; and regardless of all of Amway's mind numbing propaganda, the primary product being touted is one of these business opportunities.

Amway, a MLM company is no different than any other disreputable MLM type company wanting to do business in Wisconsin, and therefore cannot claim an exemption. In speaking with Phil Ellenbecker after the new law's passage, he assured me that none of the DSA companies, are excluded from being regulated by this law. This explains the prime reason that the DSA and companies that are part of this disreputable trade association, which include Amway and Kirby, were so incredibly opposed to the passage of this law. The DSA represents many companies who push recruitment scams in hopes of making these new recruits the primary customers for their lotions, pills, creams, health drinks, meal replacement bars, financial software amongst just some of their wares. Amway is just another of these MLM scams offering their business opportunity to any Simple Simon silly enough to listen.

Phil Ellenbecker's struggle has not just been against the fly by night magazine sales contractors, but against those whose corrupt interests and huge resources in money, have opposed the legislation all out of greedy self interest. Of course, Amway standing behind the DSA are the ultimate scoundrels operating what they want regulators to believe is another of these door to door knocking direct selling industries, the Amway world cult. Phil Ellenbecker has exposed how many different corrupt scoundrels intersect at a strange intersection with MLM scammers and with the American Scam!

For those readers who believe that the traveling sales affairs and Amway are so far different as to be comparable; think again, I would like readers to understand that recruitment by Amway and the likes of Southwestern Company goes on competitively at many colleges and universities throughout the United States. Recruitment into a swindle by any other name is still a swindle.

It has been reported that students have mistakenly diverted their tuition funds to fund the Amway prosperity dream, 'a closed market swindle'. Many have been left in the lurch, and out of desperation turned to others hoping to some how remain in school. Amway, as it is preached on colleges, is indeed a threat to the education and well being of those who are gullible to the scam. Amway seeks recruitment fodder amongst the same crop of young people as the traveling sales crews; both groups significantly exploit the same sub group of potential victims. Some schools officials as well as campus newspapers have issued warnings that students should not fall for or engage in MLM recruitment scams as this has been found to effectively endanger one's educational goals.

Congratulations Phil Ellenbecker; may your daughter Malinda rest in peace and may all those touched by this tragedy be somehow warmed in their hearts. All those supporting Phil and his traveling sales bill are an inspiration! I am providing the following links as a dedication to the Janesville victims, both living and deceased. Your light shines on!

Traveling Direct Seller Contrasted and Compared to the Quixtar Amway Business Cult

The Dark Side of The Direct Selling Industry: Kirby, Quixtar, and Traveling Sales Crews

The Horror of Traveling Sales Crews Revisited and A Condemnation of the Modern Direct Selling Industry!

Continued Exploitation of Traveling Sales Crews Supported by the Direct Selling Association

Janesville, Wisconsin Traveling Sales Crew Tragedy Recalled as Amway Youths are Killed in Indiana Crash

Quixtar/Amway Scammers and Traveling Sales Crew Desperadoes

Gary Ridgeway: How to become a better person in Quixtar/Amway!

Amway Cult Youth Initiate’s Deaths Possibly Related to Sleep Deprivation

Alcoholic Acquaintance Finds Work Driving Door to Door Salespeople Around

There is a Traveling Sales Crew Werewolf at the Door Jim!


As details emerge on this most important news story, I will provide updates as they become available. Phil Ellenbecker has provided the following media links:

http://www.channel3000.com/politics/19002876/detail.html

http://www.wrn.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=3AD27656-5056-B82A-37BDA2D18A64C157

http://gazettextra.com/news/2009/mar/25/bill-protects-our-kids/

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/41758852.html

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/03/24/ap6207145.html

http://www.channel3000.com/politics/19002876/detail.html

Lawmakers OK Bill Regulating Traveling Sales Crews
1999 Van Crash Killed 7 People
CHANNEL 3000
WISCTV.COM
Madison, Wisconsin

The Corporate Officers of 'Amway India Enterprises' Risk Prison Sentences

By QCI contributor David Brear


_______________________________

“And the end of the fight

Is a tombstone white

With the name of the late deceased

And the epitaph drear: ‘a fool lies here

Who tried to hustle the East.’ ”


Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

_______________________________


Readers should be interested to learn that, two High Court Judges, in the world’s largest democracy, have already deduced that what purports to be the ‘World’s Largest Direct Selling Company,’ is actually a fraud.


12 months ago, Shyam Sundar (a retired journalist turned advocate) started a Blog, ‘Corporate Frauds Watch,’ to help his fellow citizens of the Republic of India face the ugly truth lurking behind the Utopian ‘Multilevel Marketing’ myth of ‘total financial freedom in 2-5 years - by following a Proven Business Plan.’ Shyam has already collected a significant amount of accurate, and verifiable, information detailing the shameful rise of ‘Amway India Enterprises,’ and its aggressive echelon of attorneys’ typically-devious campaign to dodge investigation following disturbingly familiar complaints filed in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh. Here, well-conceived legislation (introduced more than 30 years ago) attempts to list the universal identifying characteristics of financial scams based on the crackpot pseudo-economic theory of limitless, future prosperity simply by handing over your cash and by convincing your friends and relations to the same (commonly-referred to in India as, ‘money circulation schemes’ or ‘prize chits’), no matter how ingeniously these scams are camouflaged. Despite the provocative, reality-denying comments of Internet ‘Amway’ apologist, David Steadson posted on the ‘Corporate Frauds Watch’ Blog (by his cultic alter-ego, ‘IBOFB’ ), with great courage and dignity, Shyam and his associates continue to call on adversely effected citizens to file complaints with appropriate law enforcement agencies. Sadly, in certain instances, the Indian police have been reluctant to follow up these ‘MLM’ cases until compelled to do so by magistrates.


On February 9th 2009, the ‘Amway’ Ministry of Truth proudly proclaimed ‘450 000 Active Business Owners in India selling 1128 Crore (eleven billions) Rupees of products annually - a 40% increase in 2 years, projected to grow by 20% over the next 12 months.’ Sadly, these sugar-coated lies have been swallowed by many casual observers, including members of the Indian financial press. However, in order to put the mainstream media to sleep, all the usual thought-stopping tactics have been employed – expensive magazine and television advertising, gifts to charity, paid association with celebrities, membership of the ‘Indian Direct Selling Association,’ etc. Tellingly, no accurate, verifiable information was offered by the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises,’ or those of the ‘Indian DSA,’ as to what percentage of the company’s (apparently impressive) market comprised authentic, external, retail sales (i.e. to persons who are not agents). It seems that, so far, no mainstream Indian financial journalist has bothered to ask this key question. Yet, just a slightly more thoughtful approach would have revealed that ‘Amway’ is the title for a puerile, but nonetheless pernicious, fiction. For, without a consistent source of external revenue (due to the deliberately banal quality of ‘Amway’ products’ combined with exorbitant pricing), the so-called ‘Proven Business Plan’ is completely unviable and, therefore, fundamentally fraudulent. In the adult world of quantifiable reality, contributing participants in the premeditated ‘Amway’ closed-market are merely being peddled an infinite share of what can only be their own finite money. Furthermore, if the generally-accepted, 50% average, annual, drop-out rate is taken into consideration, we discover that more than 1 million aspiring ‘Amway Business Owners’ have already vanished in India alone. Classically, only a deluded core-group (less than 5%) of ‘Amway’ adherents (usually with access to independent funds) remain bedazzled by the offer of a future, secure, Utopian existence, for extended periods.


At this point, I should like to thank Shyam Sundar for supplying me with the comprehensive documentation that has permitted me to trace exactly how the perverted (quasi-Christian) ‘Prosperity Gospel’ has been allowed to gnaw its way, like a cancer, into the minds of so many vulnerable (non-Christian) Indian citizens.


Back in June 1994, obsequious ambassadors of the US ‘Amway Corp.’ approached the Indian Ministry of Industry (Dept. of Industrial Development) bearing gifts. By steadfastly pretending affinity with officials (who, naturally, wanted to believe that all external investment creates employment), the ambassadors sought an agreement (renewable biannually) which simply paved the way for the creation a privately-controlled, unlimited-liability, commercial company, ‘Amway India Enterprises.’ As a subsidiary (entirely owned by its American parent company), the ambassadors meekly accepted that ‘Amway India Enterprises’ would be forbidden to manufacture or import. The proposed company would be permitted only to use its ‘Proven Multilevel Marketing Business Model’ to sell products sourced from local, independent, Indian manufacturers. Furthermore, ‘Amway India Enterprises’ was obliged to file a separate agreement with the Reserve Bank of India, allowing the proposed subsidiary to transfer capital to, and from, its parent and, thus, act as a de facto, foreign exchange dealer. Consequently, without any real investigation, the Indian Ministry of Industry, Secretariat for Industrial Approval (Foreign Collaborations II Section) rubber-stamped the application for the proposed company (within less than two months) on August 26th 1994. Twelve months later, the company was registered after final approval by the Indian Foreign Investment Promotion Board. In this way, America’s contemporary version of the Trojan Horse was dragged unnoticed into India with the assistance of the country’s own ill-informed regulators. However, it lay dormant until May 5th 1998 when a network of regional offices began to be established. Six years later, the destructive contents finally began to spill out. On August 8th 2004, the (apparently safe) original (biannual) agreement was mysteriously altered (at the request of the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’) allowing the unregulated manufacture, and/or importation, of ‘Amway’s’ own range of (effectively) unsaleable household, beauty and health products. However, at no stage did Indian officials bother to ask how the so-called ‘Proven Business Model’ could possibly work when ‘Amway’ products were now, self-evidently, many times the price of equivalent (and often vastly superior) merchandise widely-available in traditional Indian retail outlets. Yet, implicit to the modified agreement was the understanding that ‘Amway India Enterprises’ would respect Indian law and recruit non-salaried agents who could earn commission payments from retailing products. In plain language, Indian officials were deceived by the de facto agents of US-based racketeers. That said, India is a country where corruption is endemic, and it is not known what other inducements (if any) these conveniently-blind civil servants received.


The guts of above information comes from a landmark judgement given on July 19th 2007 against ‘Amway India Enterprises’ by Chief Justice C.S. Singhvi, and Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy, of the High Court of Judicature, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. In 2006, the Criminal Investigations Dept. of the Hyderabad police had raided, and sealed, the local offices of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ arresting various employees, following a particularly detailed complaint filed by A.V.S. Satyanarayana under the ‘Prize Chits and Money Circulation (banning) Act, 1978.’ This courageous individual confessed that he had wasted a considerable amount of time and money after having being subjected to overwhelming psychological pressure to join ‘Amway’ by two dominant men in his own social circle. Within three days of the registration of this complaint, lawyers acting for ‘Amway India Enterprises’ issued two writs against the Hyderabad CID. Typically, ‘Amway’ posed as the innocent victim under attack. Ignoring all quantifiable evidence to the contrary, the lawyers steadfastly pretended that their employer’s ‘Proven Business Plan’ was perfectly lawful and that ‘Amway India Enterprises’ was acting with the full approval of the Indian government. Therefore, the Andhra Pradesh police had neither reason nor authority to launch such a heavy-handed investigation, and, thus, damage, a legitimate business. At the same time, both the lawyers and corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ tried to convince the world that Satyanarayana was a pathetic liar who had filed a malicious complaint as the result of a marital/financial dispute which had, itself, resulted in his pursuing a vendetta against members of his family who were ‘Amway Distributors.’ Ironically, it was ‘Amway India Enterprise’s’ own malicious writs which brought the company under the rigorous scrutiny of the Andhra Pradesh High Court.


Simply by applying common sense, Chief Justice Singhvi and Justice Reddy were immediately able to see that ‘Amway’ is far too good to be true. Then, by ignoring the scripted protestations of ‘Amway’s’ attorneys, and by concentrating on the compelling testimony of the victim (backed up by documentary evidence), they deduced that the so-called ‘Proven Business Plan’ is in breach of Andhra Pradesh legislation. Despite the ingenuity of ‘Amway’s’ corporate camouflage, de facto agents of the company actually propagate the self-gratifying delusion that limitless prosperity can eventually be obtained without any effort simply by purchasing products and recruiting others to do the same, etc., ad infinitum. As a consequence, the two writs were dismissed, and the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ordered that the Hyderabad Criminal Investigation Dept. should be allowed to continue to follow whatever procedures are permitted by law to hold the corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ to account.





Copyright David Brear 2009

How Amway Fraud Makes Bernie Madoff Look Like an Inept School Boy

______________________________

'The key to a successful Ponzi scheme is to promise lucrative returns but to do so in an unregulated area of the capital markets.'

Harry Markopolos, November 2005

_________________________


Bernie Madoff, now admitted swindler, has had at least a few critics over the years, the most notable of which is Harry Markopolos. Harry, a rather unassuming ‘whistle blower’ addressed a complaint in November of 2005 to the Securities Exchange Commission where he presented 29 red flags describing why Bernie Madoff was operating a fraud. The SEC, who in the interim ignored Markopolis’s glaringly obvious findings, failed to investigate, and most importantly failed to protect Bernie‘s investors from being taken to the cleaners. Interested readers who want to examine Bernie’s red flags can find the complete report by clicking here.

Amway has been allowed to operate their form of 'Ponzi scheme' by masking their ‘closed market swindle’ behind a labyrinth of corporate structures, significantly masking the atrocious loss independent 'investors' have reaped throughout the history of Amway. Exactly as in the case of Madoff, Amway critics have thrown up significant red flags about Amway‘s operation, all an elaborately disguised swindle enriching the cultic initiators and a handful of ‘kingpin’'distributors' operating exactly like the mafia.

British born author, David Brear, much like Harry Markopolos, has been describing how Amway’s British entity has managed to hide the fact that Amway UK Ltd. has actually been an insolvent 'corporate structure,' having trading loses in the millions over the past decade. David reports that cash from another of Amway’s supposedly ‘independent’ corporate structures, Amway Korea, has paid Amway’s rent and covered Amway UK’s loss in the United Kingdom, all to further the myth that Amway UK is a successful business venture, all an elaborate deception to attract investors, the independent 'distributors' who--for all intents and purposes--are the only customers for Amway’s monopoly priced goods in the UK.

I have detailed how Amway goods only compete against other Amway goods in the Amway catalogs. Amway’s independent businesses, known as Amway Business Owners in the UK, invest in these abnormally priced products, thereby incurring an initial loss simply by not purchasing similar goods on the free market. I have reported that similar goods are available for incredible saving over Amway wholesale prices at nearly all conventional and well known brick and mortar retailers. The monopoly purchase of these exorbitantly priced goods is an unjust ‘enrichment’ of the Ada, Michigan DeVos - Van Andel heirs and the corporate front men for these fraudulent charlatans.

Not to be outdone by the Ada ‘closed market swindle’ are the tool selling kingpins who operate what is commonly known in the US as the Tool Scam. This group is made up of top of the pyramid distributors who sell their own monopoly product--the mostly insane business training materials that are pawned off onto all those foolish enough to ‘invest’ in Amway.

Isn’t it significant that these Kingpin distributors describe these ‘tools’ as an 'investment' in the Amway business much the same way the purchase of Amway monopolistic products is falsely portrayed as an 'investment' in the Amway prosperity dream, all an elaborate 'bait and switch' type hoax? Independent Business Owners are the Investors in Amway fraud regardless of all the mind numbing talk about Amway operating a legitimate direct selling business in which any kind of real investment can be made. 'Investment' in Amway is theft, significantly Madoff's crime.

Much of the insane Amway training promotes absolute loyalty to the Amway products. In their cultic terminology they describe the process as being ‘core’. All ‘independent’ investors are taught to be ‘100% Amway product loyal’ which then provides the excessive monopoly ‘take‘ that Amway announces as gross sales at the end of each fiscal year. Ironically enough, this take--in the billions of US dollars--is represented as the success of the Amway independents, not merely the unjust enrichment of the Ada swindlers from the sale of monopolistic goods, all of which cannot be successfully retailed to non-distributor buyers.

In reading Harry Markopolis’s complaint to the SEC, I find shocking similarities to the way Bernie Madoff operated his Ponzi scheme and how Amway operates its own form of advance fee fraud. The most significant area of concern is Amway secrecy. Amway, like Bernie, shuffles funds from one corporate structure to another to ‘cover’ for any publicly embarrassing truth--like Amway UK Ltd losses. Amway UK’s losses, all uncovered by British government investigators and revealed in court documents, shows how Amway operates a secretive scheme. Just as Bernie Madoff disguised his crimes, represented his investment scheme as financially successful, Amway, in an incredibly similar scenario, has been using the the same reality inverting claims about its own success to draw the unwary in.

Smug, Bernie Madoff sat in his posh New York surroundings presenting elaborate ‘smoke screens’ that one critic, Harry Markopolis, completely debunked in his report to the Securites and Exchange Commission, who should now be held responsible for all those swindled out of their investments since 2005--if not before. The De Vos - Van Andel Charlatans today also sit smugly in their posh surroundings while carrying forward the largest ‘closed market swindle’ defrauding their independent investors of a sum that extends into the billions, most likely dwarfing Madoff’s take.

Prior to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme being revealed, and shortly after last years disastrous fiscal, collapse, I wrote a Blog post entitled Amway/Quixtar, the FTC, the SEC and How Regulation Has Failed Citizens. The Bernie Madoff affair significantly proves my point about the SEC.

The FTC, just as in the case of the SEC, is still asleep at the wheel, being incredibly inept, allowing Amway to operate ‘the poor man’s Enron’ while burning through the finances of duped believers allowing them to fall by the wayside, all significantly believing the cult propaganda that failure is not Amway’s fault, but a defect in the 'supposed' independent business owner's own strategy.

Amway apologists, all denying the abysmal history of Amway ‘independents’, much like Bernie Madoff, represent Amway as a glaring success. Knowing the true facts, then makes these people guilty of misrepresentation and intent to defraud others! The supposed ‘truth about Amway’ is indeed one serious of lies promoting an insidious ‘advanced fee’ fraud! The most notable of these AmScam apologists is the Swedish Swindler, ibofightback, a.k.a. insider, a.k.a. David Steadson, who operates an immense web portal in every language of every nation Amway operates in. Steadson, claiming independence from the Ada, Michigan swindlers, significantly promotes Amway success myths which in the end have victimized not just persons living in the United States, but throughout the world where Amway has gone in search of new victims not exposed to all the negative information revealed in the US. Steadson, as well as the Ada charlatans who benefit by their world wide ‘closed market swindle,’ should be brought before the bar of justice and held to account for their crimes just like Bernie Madoff. Significantly, Steadson shields the Ada, Michigan charlatans by also claiming to not be affiliated with them, while Amway significantly provides most of the propaganda Steadson uses in his treacherous intent to defraud new investors. Just as Amway UK Ltd. Shields the Amway Ada conspirators from their deceit in Great Britain, Steadson attempts to shield those who benefit from his propaganda in like fashion.

The Truth is the Greatest Enemy of all Cults

...by QCI contributor, David Brear:


________________________________

‘Matilda told such Dreadful
Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch
One’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her
Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for
Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed
Her.’

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

________________________________


The following extract is taken from Mr. Justice Norris’ UK High Court Judgement (published May 14th 2008) sub-section 52:

‘It is true that Amway (UK) faces serious and sustained financial difficulties. From October 2000 to December 2005 it has consistently made losses ranging from £1.48 million per annum to £4.31 million for a slightly longer financial period (and averaging some £2.9 million). Amway UK is dependent on the financial support of Amway (Europe) Ltd. which in turn derives most of its income not from a commercially successful European operation, but from dividends payable on its shareholding in Amway Korea.’

Even when confronted with the reddest of red warning flags like this, Mr. Justice Norris still refused to wind up ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ in bankruptcy (at the request of the, then, UK Minister for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, John Hutton, in the interest of the public), because to him it remained unthinkable that (for almost 50 years) not just ‘Amway’, but the entire so-called ‘Multilevel Marketing Industry’ has, in fact, been nothing more than a grotesque collection of copy-cat, unregulated, premeditated closed-market swindles, camouflaged by (effectively) unsaleable products and mystifying mathematics, which themselves are only the deceptive gateways to much larger, and far more sinister, totalitarian frauds:

The next extract is taken from my article, ‘Amway Woes in the United Kingdom,’ (posted on ‘Quixtar Cult Intervention’ January 6th 2009):

“For the previous 35 years, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has secretly been an insolvent corporate structure, losing over $50 millions in the period 1999-2007. As a privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company, the officers of ‘Amway UK’ were not obliged to declare this key information publicly. In recent years, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has in fact, been kept afloat by cash declared to the High Court to have come from ‘Amway S. Korea.”

At the head of my article I posted a rather obvious question which, apparently, Judge Norris’ never thought to ask:

- Now why would any honest person(s) want to continue to waste millions of dollars of legal fees in preserving a perpetually insolvent, private company…?

However, I could have reshaped the same question:

- What possible legitimate motive(s) could any individual, or body of individuals, have for employing (what is self-evidently) a centrally-controlled wheel of corporate structures to transfer tens of millions of dollars of (apparently authentic) ‘dividend payments’ on (apparently authentic) shares in an (apparently independent), public company registered in S. Korea, but held by (an apparently independent) failing, private company of (the same name) registered in Europe, to prop up yet another, secretly insolvent (apparently independent), private company (of the same name) registered in Britain?

- Where exactly does this mind-numbing, intercontinental paper-trail end?

Given the wider evidence, there can only be one answer to my fundamental question. That is, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ was maliciously registered in 1973 at the direction of US-based racketeers as a counterfeit ‘direct selling company’ expressly to offer a counterfeit ‘business opportunity.’ As such (for 35 years), the principal money-making function of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has not been the sale of products to the public via its non-salaried agents, it has been to act as a false beacon luring an endless chain of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, and unwary, British citizens into an ‘advanced fee fraud’ which has been operated behind a mystifying labyrinth of apparently independent corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, activities, which itself was created to prevent, and divert, investigation and isolate the very same US-based racketeers from liability. The politically-motivated incapacity of senior, British law enforcement agents to attack this perplexing international problem on a sufficiently high-enough level (morally and intellectually) in order to hold those responsible to account, is merely further proof of how untouchable this pernicious form of organized crime has become. That said, currently, it seems that ‘Amway’s’ most energetic apologist, David Steadson, is finally failing in his own frantic efforts to vanquish his ‘Admired and Respected Leaders’ greatest enemy – the truth.

During the recent UK government investigation of ‘Amway UK Ltd.,’ a team of qualified accountants working for the ‘Companies Investigations Branch’ of the ‘Ministry for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform,’ recovered furniture truck-loads of documentary evidence from ‘Amway UK’s’ Milton Keynes HQ. UK Treasury Solicitor, Jody Ramnarine, was responsible for handling this mountain of mystifying material. For obvious reasons, the most-senior investigating CIB accountant, Peter Bott, described the affair as: by far the biggest case of his career. The (previously unthinkable) factual statement made by Mr. Justice Norris regarding ‘Amway UK’s’ loss of approximately £15 millions ($30 millions) during the period Oct. 2000 to Dec. 2005 was based on his examination of ‘Amway UK’s’ actual, annual income declarations (to ‘Companies House’) and the company’s actual, annual, audited Corporation, and Value Added, tax returns (filed with the UK tax authorities); all of which were recovered by the CIB accountants. My (virtually identical) factual statement regarding ‘Amway UK’s’ loss of over $50 millions (£25 millions) in the period 1999-2007 was based not only on Judge Norris’ text, but also on the same (once confidential) source material upon which he had based his own (previously unthinkable) comments. Prior to the UK government petition, I had already been reliably informed (by persons in a perfect position to know) that ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has never declared an annual trading profit since it was first registered. Furthermore, on paper, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has never held any substantial capital assets in the UK. Apparently, it doesn’t even own the buildings it occupies. Indeed, when I discussed this information with a qualified insolvency practitioner, he was forced to laugh. This is part of what he said:

‘Amway (UK) is a terminal case… under normal circumstances it should have been condemned years ago… if this was a PLC, its directors would have to show the books… no one in their right mind would touch it.’

Therefore, since ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has never previously had to release any accurate verifiable information about the results of its activities into the public domain, it is an axiomatic statement to say that since its creation, 35 years ago, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has always secretly been an insolvent corporate structure. In reality, without massive, and continued, external financial assistance, the British chapter of the puerile fiction entitled, ‘The World’s Largest Direct Selling Company,’ cannot even pay its own rent.

On November 27th 2007, when ‘The Times’ newspaper began to report the UK government’s half-hearted attempt to challenge the authenticity of the global ‘Amway/MLM’ myth, I posted an unambiguous comment (under my own name) on the ‘Timesonline’ Website in an attempt to try to set the record straight. Fearing that his masters’ absolute monopoly of information was in danger, Steadson a.k.a. ‘ibofightback,’ immediately posted a false, and defamatory, comment which (strangely for him) he signed, ‘David London’:

‘PS For those of you who don’t know David Brear is an anti-Amway obsessive who got upset when his brother, who was working with Amway, stopped speaking to him after his constant criticism of Amway.’

Obviously, Steadson couldn’t disclose how he happened to come by this highly personal information, or why (for that matter) he’s so certain that it is true. Since this particular episode, Steadson seems to have remained welded to his computer 24 hrs a day. Each time any free-thinking individual (anywhere in the world and in any language) attempts to post any material on the Net which might shine a piercing light into the ‘Amway’ labyrinth, Steadson is there (in one of his guises) posing as the innocent victim under attack whilst systematically categorizing the truth, and truth tellers, as lies and liars. Steadson has even posted an article in which he indignantly recounts ‘The Internet war against Amway.’ Tellingly, if you just change the name of the group, this paranoid fantasy could equally have been written by a ‘Scientologist.’

On February 22nd 2009, one of the few lingering UK core-adherents of the global ‘Amway’ myth, going by the pseudonym, ‘The Way Forward’ (from Walsall in the W. Midlands), posted the following enquiry on the (apparently independent)‘amwaytalk’ Website - one of several run by Steadson, in his most- heroic guise of ‘ibofightback’:

‘I have recently read this quote from the recent UK court case can anyone give me any info on the validity of this statement please?’

“For the previous 35 years, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ has secretly been an insolvent corporate structure, losing over $50 millions in the period 1999-2007. As a privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company, the officers of ‘Amway UK’ were not obliged to declare this key information publicly. In recent years, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ Has in fact, been kept afloat by cash declared to the High Court to have come from ‘Amway S. Korea.”

The immediate response to ‘The Way Forward’s’ reasonable question was a textbook example of (attempted) cultic manipulation using coordinated, devious techniques of social and psychological persuasion (neuro-linguistic programming, group-pressure, ego destruction, etc.). Classically, Steadson first tried to drive his (questioning) correspondent back into the (unquestioning) ‘Amway’ fold by attempting to undermine his trust in external sources of information; telling him that:

'it wasn’t a quote from the court case. ‘It’s anti-amway nutjob David Brear, isn’t it?’

After this puerile neologism, Steadson then steadfastly pretended intellectual authority by giving ‘The Way Forward’ a fatherly lecture as to the exact meaning of the English word, ‘insolvent.’ According to Steadson, my ‘emotional’ use of the word (in respect of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’) was ‘primefacie wrong and contradictory’ (I presume he meant prima facie), because “ ‘Insolvent means’ you can’t pay your bills.” Steadson then had a sudden attack of selective amnesia, but he still felt sufficiently confident to attempt to programme his (questioning) correspondent with the following lies and half-truths:

‘So no, it’s clearly not true that Amway UK was insolvent. Now what is true if I recall correctly is that Amway UK has been losing money for much of the past decade, I don’t recall the amount, but it had also turned around the last few years before the court case.’

Over the next 24 hrs, Steadson, ably assisted by his regular little flock of bleating ‘Amway’ apologists (who might, or might not, exist), pitched in to humiliate his (questioning) correspondent who bravely attempted to defend himself. Probably, not wanting to admit that he’d actually been searching for the truth about ‘Amway,’ on the Net, he claimed that my quote about ‘Amway UK’s’ secret multi-million-dollar losses had been sent to him by e-mail anonymously. ‘It is not possible to get any reply from you on a subject that does not include insults or childish abuse,’ he protested. Ironically, at one point ‘The Way Forward’ was being ridiculed for his spelling errors and poor grammar. On February 24th (apparently at 4am: When does the guy sleep?) Steadson was again exhibiting paranoia by openly accusing ‘The Way Forward’ of lying by ‘repeating unsubstantiated claims,’ in an attempt to ‘discredit Amway.’

I have (in previous articles) endeavoured to make the very serious point that David Steadson (the denier of the ‘Amway’ financial holocaust) inhabits essentially the same intellectual bunker (albeit at a different level of the stale darkness) as David Irving (the discredited WWII historical researcher who has regularly been convicted of denying the Holocaust). According to my own medically-qualified advisers, the only rational explanation of Steadson and Irving’s arrogant, reality-denying behaviour (in the face of overwhelming factual evidence) is that the pair of them suffer from ‘severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder’ (NPD). This is a psychological term first used by Dr. Heinz Kohut in 1971. It was recognised as the name for a form of pathological narcissism in the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ 1980. Narcissistic traits are common in, and normal to, human psychological development. When these traits become accentuated by a failure of the social environment and persist into adulthood, they can intensify to the level of a severe mental disorder. However, severe and inflexible NPD is thought to effect less than 1% of the general adult population. It occurs more frequently in men than women. In simple terms, NPD is total self-worship born of its sufferers’ unconscious belief that they are flawed in a way that makes them fundamentally unacceptable to others. In order to shield themselves from the intolerable rejection and isolation which they unconsciously believe would follow if others recognised their defective nature, NPD sufferers go to almost any lengths to control others’ view of, and behaviour towards, them. Sufferers often choose partners, and raise children, who exhibit ‘co-narcissism’, a co-dependent personality disorder like co-alcoholism. Co-narcissists organize themselves around the needs of others (to whom they feel responsible), they accept blame easily, are eager to please, defer to others’ opinions and fear being seen as selfish if they act assertively. NPD was observed, and apparently well-understood, in ancient times. Self-evidently, the broader term, ‘narcissism,’ comes from the allegorical myth of Narcissus, the beautiful Greek youth who falls in love with his own reflection.

Currently NPD has nine recognised diagnostic criteria (five of which are required for a diagnosis):

- has a grandiose sense of self-importance.

- is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, etc.

- believes that he/she is special and unique and can only be understood by other special people.

- requires excessive admiration.

- strong sense of self-entitlement.

- takes advantage of others to achieve his/her own ends.

- lacks empathy.

- is often envious or believes that others are envious of him/her.

- arrogant disposition.

Sadly, in respect of his gung-ho refusal to abandon the ‘Amway’ bunker, David Steadson is not unique. In the mid- 1990s, I contacted (separately) two apparently independent, cult advice associations registered as ‘charities’ in the UK, ‘Catalyst’ and the ‘Cult Information Centre,’ with urgent concerns about my elderly, widowed mother’s safety after my only brother (a previously-dissatisfied schoolteacher from the North of England) had fallen head over heels in love with ‘Amway.’ At the time, my brother had moved into my mother’s home. He was in a state of self-righteous euphoria - filling the house with bizarre, quasi-religious books, magazines and tapes. Soon, he had quit his job after giving my mother the illusion that she’d made a free choice to sign-over half of everything she owned into his name. It was impossible to reason with my brother. He was regularly reciting scripted statements to the effect that:

‘In the future, all supermarkets’ would ‘be finished in the UK,’ because the ‘Amway Business Model’ was ‘taking over’… ‘whining critics and losers’ who hadn’t the ‘guts to try to achieve their Dreams’ would soon ‘kick themselves’, because there were ‘billions of pounds at stake.’

In ignorance, I had assumed that Graham Baldwin (director of ‘Catalyst’) and Ian Howarth (director of ‘CIC’) were free-thinking individuals who specialized in the study of cults, and who provided independent advice, and accurate information, to enquirers. However, I soon discovered that they were, in fact, under contract as paid ‘consultants on cultism’ to ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ Consequently, both systematically excluded all quantifiable evidence to the contrary, and steadfastly pretended that ‘Amway’ is a multi-national corporation offering individuals a ‘Business Opportunity’ and that my concerns about ‘Amway’ being a cult were ridiculous, unfounded rumours spread by the organization’s commercial competitors and repeated by ill-informed journalists. Amazingly, this was in reference to ‘Amway’ having been profiled in the UK (in 1994) in a major ‘Time Out’ magazine article entitled ‘Hidden Persuaders’ (published despite typical, empty threats from the legal representatives of ‘Amway UK’). This ‘special investigation’ by News Editor, Tony Thompson, 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.’

Far from being ill-informed, Tony Thompson (who, subsequently, became Crime Correspondent for Britain’s prestigious ‘Guardian’ newspaper) had cited the work of Professor Robert Jay Lifton (one of America’s foremost psychiatric authors) who, in 1961 (after 10 years research, interviewing US servicemen held prisoner during the Korean War), published, ‘Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.’ In this standard, medical text-book, Dr. Lifton identified 8 ‘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.

To give readers some idea of how outrageous ‘Amway’ apologists’ denial of reality can be: In his (self-appointed) capacity of spokesman for the ‘Cult Information Centre’ (which, despite its impressive-sounding handle, is a one man band) Ian Howarth has published an elementary explanation of cults in which he mentions Professor Robert Jay Lifton. Given the fact that he must, therefore, have read ‘Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,’ how then is it possible that Howarth could have:-

- accepted to act as a paid ‘consultant on cultism’ for an organization where the presence of all Lifton’s 8 ‘themes’ is blindingly obvious?

- sought to undermine my trust in external sources of information?

Was Howarth aware that his ostensible employer, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ was secretly insolvent and that his thirty pieces of silver actually came from overseas? There can be no doubt that not only Howarth’s moral cowardice, but also his employment contract with ‘Amway UK Ltd.,’ will continue to preclude him from facing the truth.



Copyright David Brear 2009

THE WORLD’S LARGEST AUTOMOBILE FACTORY WAS A FRAUD

...by QCI contributing guide to the Amway Labyrinth, David Brear:


_____________

‘If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

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When I first began to examine the disturbing, ritual images (clean-cut, heterosexual couples with perfect smiles and perfect children, posing beside their shiny new ‘Dream’: cars, houses, pools, boats, etc.), which have been used to keep the vulnerable and unwary swallowing the ‘Amway’ myth, I was struck by the frightening similarity between this kitsch, Utopian propaganda and the sugary pictures once used to coat another poisonous lie. According to the ‘Amway’ myth: everyone, no matter what their class, profession or property can become the owner of an ‘Independent Business’ which (only through effort and unquestioning belief) has been proven to bring ‘Total Financial Freedom in 2-5 years.’ On closer inspection, this ambiguous fairytale turns out to have been adapted from a very specific, and revealing, pattern. In unambiguous terms, according to the same closed-logic of the movement’s controlling scenario: everyone who fails to achieve economic redemption in ‘Amway’, has only himself/herself to blame. Unfortunately (over a period spanning 6 decades), a veritable mountain of quantifiable evidence has proved the so-called ‘Amway Business Opportunity’ to be nothing more than a premeditated, closed-market swindle shielded by (effectively) unsaleable products and mystifying mathematics. The plain truth of the matter is that, behind all the reality-inverting ‘Amway’ propaganda, lurks a self-perpetuating, self-gratifying and progressively-more-expensive-to-play game of make-believe which has been rigged so that no one can win, except the sanctimonious little gang of charlatans who set it up. However, this soul-destroying, totalitarian racket is neither original nor unique. Therefore, it cannot be fully-understood in isolation.

Immediately after usurping absolute power in Germany, Adolf Hitler declared that ‘May 1st 1933’ would be the first ‘National Labour Day.’ Since the end of the 19th century, May Day had been the workers’ festival in Germany and many other European countries. Although the event was traditionally marked with mass-parades of trade-unionists, Socialists and Communists, Hitler now made a typically ambiguous promise - ‘National Labour Day would be celebrated as never before.’ During the final days of April 1933, the leaders of Germany’s trade-unions (agricultural and industrial), along with large delegations of workers, were summoned to Berlin. To give them the illusion that they were making a free-choice, many were offered airline, and train, tickets and accommodation, whilst (for the benefit of the totally positive ‘Nazi’ news-reels) a select few were welcomed at the Chancellery by a smiling ‘Führer’ with beer and sausages. On May 1st, Hitler gave one of his mesmerizing performances in front of an audience of over 100 000 cheering workers at Berlin’s Tempelhof airfield. His reality-inverting script was entitled: ‘Honour Work and Respect the Worker.’ The following morning, every German trade-union office was overrun by hordes of heavily armed ‘Nazi’ agents. At a stroke, all unions were demolished to make way for Hitler’s ‘National Socialist’ Utopia. Union funds were seized and democratically-elected union leaders captured en-mass, beaten-up and packed-off to ‘concentration camps.’ Hitler’s main partner in setting this treacherous trap was one of his most-obsequious acolytes, Dr. Robert Ley (1890-1945). Ironically, in German, Ley is pronounced ‘Lie’.


Robert Ley was born in rural Westphalia. He was the 7th child of 11 children in a family of poor peasant farmers. As a youth, he had escaped his humble origins and attended the Universities of Jena and Bonn to study chemistry. At the outbreak of WWI, Ley (aged 24) was one of the first to volunteer to go to the Western Front. After 2 years in the artillery, he then volunteered to become a pilot, but in the summer of 1917 he was shot down and taken prisoner. It is generally believed that Ley (who returned home with an incurable speech impediment) suffered brain damage when his aeroplane crashed. Despite gaining a shameful reputation as an overbearing, and vindictive, lecher, drunkard and bully, in 1920, Ley received a Doctorate in chemistry from the University of Westphalia. He went on to work as a food chemist for an arm of the I. G. Farben Chemical company in Leverkusen in the Ruhr. However, he couldn’t live with the fact that the Treaty of Versailles had awarded this region to the French. Thus, in 1924, Ley turned to extreme nationalism. When he lost his job (because of his drinking), he became a full-time ‘Nazi’ proselytizer. With his respectable academic title, Ley was welcomed into the fledgling movement with open arms. He immediately found himself in a position of power in a organization presented externally as a ‘political party’, but which internally was totalitarian (i.e. it was centrally-controlled and required of its core-adherents an absolute subservience to the group and its patriarchal leadership above all other persons). ‘Nazi’ recruiters generally targeted alienated veterans. They could be more-easily persuaded to buy into the self-gratifying delusion that Germany and Austria hadn’t lost WWI militarily…. The ‘Aryan race’ had been betrayed and forced to surrender in 1918, by industrial strikes which crippled arms production and supply…. These strikes were instigated by trade union leaders who were the agents of an evil international Communist/Freemasonic conspiracy controlled by sub-human Jews. In 1925, Hitler appointed Robert Ley ‘Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland.’ He was subsequently appointed ‘Reichsorganizationsleiter’ (‘party organization chief’) and elected to the Reichstag. The celebrated American journalist and author, William L. Shirer (1904-1993), who met Ley on numerous occasions, described him as:

‘repulsive… tough, excitable, vulgar - a brawling roughneck. He seemed to me to have the instability, the sense of insecurity, that was common to most of the men around Hitler.’

Before the end of 1934 (as part of Hitler’s secret plan to tear up the Treaty of Versailles to reignite, and win, WWI), the defunct German unions were replaced by a single corporate structure. This was headed by Ley (who could not be held to account by his membership), presented externally as a non- profit-making association protecting the rights of all workers and arbitrarily defined by the ‘Nazi’ leadership as the ‘Deutsche Arbeitfront’ or ‘German Labour Front’ (‘DAF’). Over 25 millions workers, business owners and professionals were effectively forced to join - no one could legally work in the ‘Nazi’ Utopia without a ‘DAF Work Book.’ In reality, this document was part of a vast intelligence-gathering operation. At the same time, ‘Nazi’ labour-laws took away workers’ rights and reduced them to the position of serfs in a latter-day feudal system. As German employers were given the right to retain ‘DAF Work Books,’ employees were (effectively) barred from changing jobs. Collective bargaining was ended and strikes were outlawed. Powerless German workers could now be allotted an increasingly smaller share of the national income (i.e. the cost of living increased, but wages were frozen). Eventually, most were obliged to live at little better than subsistence level. By 1939, the total annual figure being systematically extracted from ‘DAF’ members in ‘dues’ has been estimated to have exceeded 1 billion Reichsmarks (about $200 millions). The ‘DAF’ had 7000 employees, but it relied on 135 000 ‘volunteers.’ In this way, the ‘Nazi’ leadership eventually acquired absolute control over a capital sum estimated at 5 billions Reichsmarks (about $1 billion).

In order to distract the population from reality, the ‘Nazi’ leadership created a parallel corporate structure, ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (‘Strength Through Joy’ ) or ‘KdF’ — a non-profit-making association providing a range of benefits and amenities for the German working-classes and their families. In 1937, this organization received 29 millions Reichsmarks from the ‘DAF.’ Obviously, this was mostly the workers’ own money. An avalanche of thought-stopping words and images was used to maintain the illusion that redemption was on hand. Concerts, operas, art exhibitions, etc. were organized. Many workers were given ‘free’ gymnastics and football training, whilst others received access to previously exclusive sports (golf, tennis, sailing, etc.). A number of gigantic ‘classless holiday-camps,’ etc., were also constructed. These gained prizes in international, architectural competitions. Hundreds of beach, lake and ski resorts were requisitioned along with ten ocean liners to take German workers on Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean cruises. The ‘Nazi’ Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, focused everyone’s attention on what were described as ‘the world’s first, purpose-built, classless cruise-liners,’ the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ and the ‘Robert Ley.’ The launch of the 25 000 ton ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ in Hamburg on May 5th 1937, was an international event attended by tens of thousands of bedazzled believers along with a flock of bleating propagandists. ‘Nazi’ news-reels, newspapers, brochures, magazines, posters, etc., all reflected the same ritual images of prosperous workers and their happy families enjoying the pure air and freedom of the high seas onboard their dream boats. For a short period, ‘KdF’ was the largest travel agency in the world. The holidays it supplied, although Spartan and tightly regimented, were amazingly cheap. Meanwhile, the ‘Nazi’ leadership was free to embezzle huge amounts of workers’ cash from the ‘DAF.’ Robert Ley gave himself an enormous salary. As well as private railway carriage, a fleet of luxury cars and villas in a number of cities, Ley bought himself a country estate near to Cologne and began hoarding art and antiques. His drinking, womanizing and boasting now knew no bounds.


In February 1933, whilst attending the Berlin Motor Show, Hitler had made another ambiguous promise: Only 1 in 50 men owned an automobile in Germany, compared with 1 in 5 in America.… every German would, therefore, be given the opportunity to own a car… these would be sold for less than 1000 Reichsmarks (the cost of a motorcycle at that time) and make no profits. Although most free-thinking observers recognised this as being impossible (the cheapest, German-produced car on the open-market was 1 500 Reichsmarks), over the next few years ‘Nazi’ propagandists elaborated the ‘Volkswagen’ or ‘People’s Car’ lie until the truth became almost unthinkable. Obviously, many oppressed workers needed to believe in the ‘People’s Car,’ and the concept had existed prior to the Hitler usurping power. As early as 1927, the renowned Austrian automotive engineer, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951), published a series of sketches of a proposed, lightweight, low-maintenance, rear-engine, family vehicle, capable of 100 kph. By the early 1930s, some prototypes had been built to his designs; first by Zündapp (whose directors withdrew because of problems with the 3 cylinder water-cooled engine), then by NSU (whose engineers introduced a revolutionary torsion suspension and a flat 4 cylinder, air-cooled engine, but whose directors withdrew because of the depressed economic climate). At this time, Ferdinand Porsche seems to have been deliberately targeted by the ‘Nazi’ leadership. All alone and with his design company on the verge of liquidation, he was encouraged to request a meeting with the ‘Führer’ himself. Porsche was easily seduced. In 1934, he signed a government contract containing the following terms:

1). 3 prototype cars had to be available within 10 months.
2). They had to have a carrying capacity of 4 adults, or 2 adults and 3 children,
or 3 soldiers and a machine gun.
3). They had to be able to cruise at 100 kph.
4). Average fuel consumption had to be no more than 8 litres per 100 km.
5). The engine had to be air-cooled.
6). The retail price had to be less than 1000 Reichmarks.

Hitler was completely unqualified to design a car. He couldn’t even drive, but, for obvious reasons, Porsche felt obliged to play along with the story that the ‘People’s Car’ was originally the Führer’s own concept. At the same time, the ‘Nazi’ regime massively expanded the construction of the high-speed, Autobahn, road system. Again, this project (although touted as the part of the ‘Führer’s great vision to free the masses and unify the Reich’), had existed (albeit in a reduced form) prior to Hitler usurping power.

Predictably, Porsche’s design company, in reluctant partnership with the ‘German Auto Manufacturers Association’ (RDA), found it (effectively) impossible to remain within the 1000 Reichsmarks price limit. The 3 prototypes didn’t appear until 1936; thus, missing the 10 month deadline. The Porsche company and the RDA were in breach of contract, so the project could be conveniently restructured under the banner of a further off-shoot of the ‘DAF’, ‘Gesellschaft Zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagen’ or ‘German People’s Car Planning Group Inc.’ (‘GeZuVor. GmbH.’). The ‘Nazi’ propaganda machine went into overdrive - 300 millions marks of accumulated ‘DAF’ funds would be committed to building the ‘Largest Automobile Factory in the World’, it would employ 70 000 people and be capable of producing ‘1.5 millions vehicles a year; Greater Capacity than Ford.’ Daimler-Benz was subcontracted to build 30 test-vehicles. In 1937, the Stuttgart coachbuilders, Reutter, delivered 30 exhibition prototypes in the form of saloons, drop-head coupés and open-tourers. Meanwhile, the workers’ ‘DAF’ money financed a team of architects and engineers (some of whom had been recruited from Ford in the USA) to plan the construction of a vast Utopian factory/metropolis. On May 26th 1938, Hitler laid the cornerstone at the little town of Fallersberlen (birthplace of Heinrich Hoffman, the composer of ‘Deutschland uber Alles’). A flock of around 150 ‘Nazi’ propagandists were in attendance along with a claimed 70 000 people. A smiling ‘Führer’ was filmed in the passenger seat of an open-tourer mobbed by his deluded admirers. To wild cheering and thunderous applause, Hitler proudly declared that his new car would be called the ‘KdF-Wagen,’ and his new factory/metropolis, ‘KdF-Stadt.’
In reality, this carefully stage-managed event was just a cruel charade, because (whilst it remained in ‘Nazi’ hands) the ‘People’s Car’ was the bait in one of the most-devious advance-fee frauds in history. The switch soon appeared — a counterfeit direct sales scheme or ‘savings plan’ instigated and controlled by the ‘Nazi’ leadership. At this time, there were about 75 exhibition prototypes in existence and they were constantly being shipped around to fairs and festivals all over Germany. Millions of convincing brochures and magazines were circulated. These featured strangely-familiar, ritual images of prosperous workers and their smiling families enjoying the pure air and freedom of the open road in their dream cars. Similar posters appeared in factories and public places.

‘Strength Through Joy announcement (August 2nd. 1938)’

1. ‘Each German, no matter what their class, profession or property can become the buyer of a People’s Car’.
2. ‘The minimum weekly payment, including insurance, will be 5 marks. Regular payment of this sum will guarantee, after a period which is yet to be determined, the acquisition of a People’s Car’.
3. ‘Application for the People’s Car savings plan can be made at any DAF or KdF office, where further details can also be obtained. Factories and shops can submit collective orders’.

‘A People’s Car for every German — let that be our goal. That is what we want to achieve. Will all of you help in that; it shall be our way of saying thank-you to the Führer’;

During the latter months of 1938, masses of Germans felt obliged to apply for the ‘savings plan;’ no one was refused. The propaganda steadfastly pretended that 10 millions Germans would have a car by 1948. The authenticity of this fairytale could not be challenged in the totally positive world according to Hitler. However, the same fiction was widely-reported as fact internationally which, sadly, made it appear even more convincing. In this way, the ‘Nazi Propaganda Minister’ easily maintained an absolute monopoly of information. In reality, many Germans never actually began to pay for their ‘KdF Wagens’ whilst a huge percentage soon dropped-out, simply because the average worker had barely enough money to survive. It was then announced that, after 3 years, ‘regular savers’ would receive a ‘priority contract’ guaranteeing a ‘KdF-Wagen (subject to availability)’… production would ‘begin in September 1939.’ In the spring of 1939, Robert Ley gave a typically sanctimonious speech:

“Our God is the wonderful Law of Creation whose amazing unity of all things shows itself in wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive. A priest recently asked me: ‘but what about eternity?’ I replied: ‘A day in National Socialist Germany is better for me than all your Heaven.”

At the start of September 1939, less than 350 000 unquestioning Germans were actually still struggling to make their payments, convinced that in 2 more years they would be driving down an Autobahn in a shiny new ‘KdF’ dream car. The propaganda soon claimed that 50 ‘KdF Wagens’ had already been delivered (albeit to ‘special customers’). Even if these had been available to regular ‘contract holders,’ then the odds against getting one would have been almost 7000/1. In reality, Hitler was busy ensuring that the fulfilment of his ‘KdF’ fantasies would be postponed indefinitely, because, at precisely this moment, his long-planned invasion of Poland (facilitated by the Autobahn system) forced the leaders of Britain and France to declare war on the ‘Third Reich.’ The ‘Nazi’ leadership immediately posed as innocent victims – the Fatherland was being attacked by the agents of an ‘evil international Jewish/Freemasonic conspiracy’…. To save the ‘Aryan race,’ ‘KdF-Stadt’ would have to be turned-over to armaments manufacture…. The classless cruise ships, ‘Robert Ley’ and the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ (which had already been requisitioned to bring ‘Nazi’ volunteers home from the Spanish Civil War), would have to turned-over to the navy. In this way, not one of Hitler’s ‘KdF’ offers was honoured and not one cent was refunded. The majority of victims couldn’t face the ego-destroying reality that their admired and respected ‘Führer’ had deliberately cheated them. Those who could were obliged to remain silent. All free-thinking individuals challenging the authenticity of the closed-logic ‘Nazi’ myth risked systematic categorization, exclusion and destruction as ‘Traitors.’

During the early 1940s, some 65 000 all-terrain and amphibious, ‘type 82’, ‘type 128’ and type ‘166’ military vehicles (converted from Porsche’s designs) were supplied to the German army. There was also a ‘type 87’ military saloon car for high-ranking ‘Nazi’ officers. By 1943, ‘KdF Stadt’ was principally fulfilling the secret military objective for which it had always been intended - an aircraft repair factory, safe from attack because it did not feature on most RAF maps. However, during 1945, production of the notorious ‘V1’ flying-bomb began at ‘KdF Stadt.’ More than 3500 of these hit London, and the factory became a priority target for the RAF and USAF. After the War, the remains of ‘KdF-Stadt’ and the ‘People’s Car’ project were discovered by a British army officer, Major Ivan Hirst. He was looking for ideas to rebuild the German economy, but which wouldn’t threaten British jobs. Although several people, including Robert Ley and Ferdinand Porsche, were arrested as a war criminals (12 000 – 20 000 POWs had been forced to work as slaves at ‘KdF-Stadt’ and many deaths had resulted) the ‘Volkswagen Beetle’ eventually became a world-beating product. Porsche was held without indictment for 20 months in Dijon, whilst Ley hanged himself in Nuremberg before his trial. ‘KdF-Stadt’ was renamed Wolfsburg.

In 1961, after a protracted lawsuit, the surviving victims of the ‘People’s Car’ swindle were offered the choice of a cheque for 100 Deutche marks or a discount of 600 Deutche marks on a new ‘VW Beetle.’ Also in 1961, Volkswagen paid the Ringhoffer-Tatra group of Czechoslovakia 3 millions Deutsch marks. In the face of overwhelming evidence, members of the Porsche family accepted that a significant amount of the original ‘People’s Car’ design (particularly, the body styling, torsion suspension and rear-mounted air-cooled engine) was, in fact, copied by Ferdinand Porsche from the revolutionary designs of Professor Hans Ledwinka. These had been patented by Tatra in the early 1930s, and had featured on the ‘T97 Tatra’, first produced in 1936. Prior to WWII, although faced with a mystifying labyrinth of corporate structures which was deliberately designed to isolate the ‘Nazi’ leaders from liability, the directors of the Tatra company had filed a lawsuit against ‘KdF,’ but this automatically disappeared when Hitler’s forces rolled down his nice new Autobahns into Czechoslovakia.

In 1998, to avoid several immense lawsuits filed in the USA, Volkswagen set up a $12 millions private relief-fund to compensate the slaves whose misery had helped establish the corporation in world markets during the ‘Nazi’-era. Conveniently, by this time, only a few former-slaves remained alive.

As for Joseph Goebbels: In the spring of 1945 (as the Red Army approached Berlin), along with his wife, Magda, and 6 children, he withdrew into the ‘Führerbunker.’ When Hitler shot himself on April 30th 1945, Goebbels was named as ‘Reich Chancellor’ in the ‘Führer’s’ will. The following day, Goebbels ordered an SS doctor, Helmut Kunz, to inject his 6 children with morphine and then break an ampoule of cyanide in each of their mouths. Kunz later claimed that Hitler’s own doctor and the children’s mother had actually administered the poison. About 15 minutes afterwards, Goebbels (probably) shot himself whilst his wife (probably) took cyanide. Their bodies (which were only partially burned due to a lack of petrol), were later identified by Vice Admiral Hans-Erich Voss.

Copyright David Brear 2008
(End)


'If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.'






People's Car Pin:







People's Business Pin:

‘The World’s Largest Direct Selling Company’ is a Fraud.

by QCI contributing author, David Brear:

‘…when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(1859-1930)

_________

There is no honest way of opening this commentary other than clearly to state that, given the unchallenged fact that (for 35 years) virtually no authentic retail sales have ever been conducted by ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ via its non-salaried commission agents (due to the company’s deliberately exorbitant price, and/or similar banal quality, monopoly held over the products it has manufactured, and/or supplied, which has rendered them effectively impossible to sell on the open-market), the recent UK Appeal Court judgement not to overturn the original UK High Court decision to refuse to wind up ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ in the interest of the public (at the request of two, successive UK Ministers for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, John Hutton and Peter Mandelson), is fundamentally flawed. On closer inspection, the High Court and Appeal Court judgements are revealed as not having been entirely reasoned in accurate deconstructed terms or based exclusively on quantifiable evidence. On the contrary (without any detailed qualification or heavy irony), these documents casually repeated many disturbing examples of ‘Amway’s’ own thought-stopping ‘commercial’ key words and mystifying pseudo-mathematics. In the final analysis, these UK judgements naïvely accepted what the paid apologists of US-based racketeers steadfastly pretend to be reality, not on what was proved to be reality. The (apparently untouchable) billionaire icons of American capitalism who peddle the ‘Amway’ myth (‘financial freedom in 2-5 years’), and who seek to maintain an absolute monopoly of information about the results of their clandestine activities, must have fallen about laughing when they read the definitive UK Appeal Court verdict; for their complex ‘Mafia’-style labyrinth of (apparently independent) corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, activities, has so far done its job and prevented rigorous investigation; enabling them to escape liability for one the most pernicious deceptions in British legal history.

By a remarkable coincidence, in the same week that the BERR v. ‘Amway’ appeal was heard, it was announced that another (previously untouchable) billionaire icon of American capitalism, Bernard Lawrence Madoff (b. 1938), had broken-down and confessed (to his stunned associates) that his miraculous, ever-expanding $50 billions hedge fund was a puerile fiction and that (during several decades) he had, in fact, been running a vast Ponzi scheme. This led to his two middle-aged sons approaching the FBI, whose agents promptly arrested the elderly Madoff on charges of securities fraud. Amazingly, it was also revealed that ‘Bernard Madoff Securities LLC’ was supposed to have been thoroughly investigated, and cleared of any wrongdoing, on at least 8 separate occasions in the last 16 years by various civil regulatory authorities including the Securities Exchange Commission. Tellingly, a number of these selectively blind, deaf and dumb regulators are now under investigation themselves, because in May 1999 an intellectually-rigorous financial analyst, Harry Markopolos, filed an anonymous complaint with the SEC in Boston Mass. in which he suggested that since the incessant profits Madoff’s ‘fund’ declared were impossible to generate lawfully, by deduction the ‘fund’s manager’ had to be a crook. Six years later, nothing (other than the claimed size of Madoff’s miraculous fund) had changed, so Markopolos (now an independent fraud investigator) gave a 21 page document to the Branch Chief of the SEC in New York, Ms. Meaghan Cheung, under the unambiguous title: ‘The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.’ In this, Markopolis explained in great detail that Madoff was almost certainly running a Ponzi scheme. Mysteriously, no action was taken. However, based on Madoff’s own published confession, and on the recorded testimonies of his once wealthy, but now destitute, victims, it has become perfectly clear that he acquired absolute control over an indeterminate capital sum (totalling several billions dollars) by steadfastly pretending that he could multiply his ‘investors’ money using an infallible stock-market investment strategy. In the adult world of quantifiable reality, this was a puerile and unoriginal lie, because Madoff was simply taking his new clients’ money to pay off the old ones. As such, the Madoff affair is a classic example of the most-widely understood form of ‘premeditated closed-market swindle.’ This can be technically defined as:

Those without tangible specificity (popularly known as: ‘Snowball,’ or ‘Ponzi,’ schemes), wherein the instigators counterfeit, and/or subvert, a simple corporate structure in which they arbitrarily, and falsely, define themselves as ‘Commercial Sponsors, Financial Managers, etc.’ Then, by maintaining an absolute monopoly of information presented using a constant repetition of further, thought-stopping ‘commercial’ key words and images combined with pseudo-economic/mathematical mystification, deceive members of the public into becoming, and to deceive others into becoming, the unconscious victims of, and contributing participants in, a counterfeit ‘Investment Scheme’ without a consistent source of external revenue (due to the fact that the instigators’ only real activity is the acquisition of victims’ money) in which victims are arbitrarily, and falsely, defined by the instigators as ‘Investors,’ but over which the instigators retain absolute control of its means of exchange.

In simple terms, this (apparently complex) variation of the ‘closed-market swindle’ merely involves peddling infinite shares in what can only be the victims’ own finite money. The alternative graphic description, ‘snowball scheme,’ stems from the fact that when the number of victims reaches a critical mass, belief in the Utopian myth of a miraculous system to multiply money, begins to roll-along and grow under its own momentum. ‘Closed-market swindles’ can, therefore, also be described using any traditional allegory illustrating collective delusion: the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’; the ‘Blind Leading the Blind’; the ‘Ship of Fools’; etc. However, the phenomenon is now perhaps best described as an organic computer virus — a contagious parasite that needs human minds to give it existence. Once it has found a vulnerable point of entry, the virus proliferates and survives in traditional culture, because carriers systematically pass it on via their social contacts. When described in entirely accurate deconstructed terms, the psychology driving ‘closed-market swindles’ is indistinguishable to that driving any other self-gratifying, pseudo-scientific delusion. New adherents often exhibit euphoria, but certain converts can become completely dissociated from external reality; experiencing a prolonged psychotic episode; akin to a chronic gambling addiction. The more highly they regard themselves: the more the reality - that they have been taken in by a childish game of make-believe - becomes a threat to their own self-identity/esteem and related-psychological function. That said, in their most well-known form, ‘closed-market swindles’ are unsustainable. As in the example of Bernard Madoff, a proportion of illegal gains can be used to maintain the temporary illusion of authenticity. However, when the supply of new converts runs out, and/or too many adherents begin to demand their fictitious profits, the virus writers (unless they become dissociated from external reality themselves) are forced to abscond with the cash. The authorities are only hit by a storm of complaint when the core-group of victims suddenly reconnects with external reality. However, Madoff is almost unique, in that, when he could no longer maintain his absolute monopoly of information, he made a full, and frank, confession about what he’d been doing and he is apparently now allowing himself to be held to account. It will be very interesting to ascertain what he, or (for that matter) Harry Markopolos, make of ‘Amway’

Since its registration as a privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company in 1973, ‘Amway UK’ has acted as a false beacon deceiving an endless chain of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable and unwary British citizens into becoming victims of, and unpaid proselytizers for the least-well understood variation of the ‘premeditated closed-market swindle’ - presented externally as a perfectly viable and lawful ‘Business Opportunity’ from which any participant can reasonably expect to receive future, limitless material benefits. When casually observed in isolation, this bedazzling edifice appears to be pointless and absurd rather than criminal and dangerous. In fact (according to the tax record), ‘Amway UK’ has never declared a trading profit; losing around $50 millions in the last 8 years. In the UK, the temporary illusion of authenticity has actually been maintained with cash declared in court to have come via ‘Amway Europe’ from ‘Amway S. Korea.’ However, although the majority of British victims have silently abandoned the ‘Amway’ ship when inevitably they failed to make a profit, a significant number have sailed on regardless, only to be wrecked by a secondary ‘advanced fee fraud’ (comparable to the ‘Nigerian Bank Scam’). This allied criminal activity has secretly netted hundreds of millions of dollars (much of which has been collected in cash and shipped to the USA without any payment of UK tax).

Tellingly (for 35 years), victims of the primary ‘Amway’ swindle have been arbitrarily and falsely defined by its instigators as: ‘Independent Business Owners’ or ‘IBOs’. This is just one example of a known, devious, psychological persuasion technique, extensively-employed within criminogenic totalitarian cults like ‘Amway,’ - ‘neuro-linguistic programming.’ Using this and other, known, devious techniques designed to shut down individuals’ critical, and evaluative, faculties without their fully-informed consent (variously described as: ‘mental manipulation’, ‘coercive behaviour modification’, ‘group pressure’, ‘thought reform’, ‘ego destruction’, ‘mind control’, ‘love bombing’, ‘sleep deprivation,’ etc.), core-victims of the primary ‘Amway’ swindle have been conditioned to accept blame for their own failure and, thus, in defence of their self-esteem, many have become obliged to dissipate all their personal resources in order regularly to purchase grossly over-priced books, recordings, tickets to meetings, etc. on the pretext that these optional ‘Business Support Materials’ contain a secret knowledge vital to achieving success. This pernicious deception manipulates its victims’ existing beliefs and instinctual desires, creating the illusion that they are exercising free-will. In reality, it has comprised well over 90% of all financial activity occurring within ‘Amway’ in the UK. In this way (since the creation of the ‘American Way Association’ in 1959), a handful of individuals in the USA have unlawfully acquired absolute control over a capital sum (derived from an endless chain of millions of their fellow citizens and from tens of millions of citizens of dozens of countries around the globe) which places them alongside the most-notorious racketeers in history. Although these sanctimonious charlatans steadfastly pretend absolute moral and intellectual authority, they actually make Bernie Madoff look like a boy scout.

Predictably (in a written deposition), one of the latest intake of wide-eyed corporate officers of ‘Amway UK’ steadfastly pretended to the UK High Court that she and her colleagues had only recently been made aware that a problem existed with ‘unauthorized Business Support Materials’ being sold by a few rogue ‘Distributors’ within the company, and that although this material had been swiftly prohibited, and those responsible for its sale suspended, neither she nor her colleagues could be held responsible for the activities of other independent companies. Richard Berry, the long-time director of the ‘UK Direct Selling Association’ (a privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-company that claims to regulate companies like ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ ), also steadfastly pretended probity (in a written deposition). However, self-evidently the sale of all these materials in the UK has only been rendered possible because ‘Amway’s’ centrally-controlled closed-market was deliberately unviable, and because of the co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion employed within the organization. In reality (over a period of 35 years), the corporate officers of ‘Amway UK’ and those of the ‘UK DSA,’ have conspired to occult, and/or down-play, the secondary advanced fee fraud. Yet, mysteriously, the UK government chose to offer absolutely no evidence to the High Court that these scripted depositions of ignorance were perjury.

In reality, starting in 1993, in the face of empty threats of legal action from ‘Amway UK’s’ aggressive echelon of attorneys (in which, typically, the corporate officers posed as innocent victims under attack), a series of damning exposés were published in the London listings magazine, ‘Time Out’. These in-depth articles detailed exactly what was occurring. They even named the individual who was receiving most of the illicit cash from the UK, ‘Amway Diamond Distributor’, ‘pastor’ Dexter Yager of Charlotte, N. Carolina. ‘Time Out’s’ (then) News Editor, Tony Thompson, cited US lawsuits in which audited tax records had proved that virtually all of Yager’s multi-million dollar annual income derived not from ‘Amway,’ but from selling so-called ‘Business Support Materials.’ Tony Thompson also described the devious social, psychological and physical persuasion techniques, present within ‘Amway,’ as being ‘cult-like.’ As a result, a significant number of destitute and confused ‘Amway’ victims began to contact cult-advice associations in the UK. It was at this time that ‘Amway UK’ suddenly acquired two ‘independent consultants on cultism,’ Graham Baldwin (director of ‘Catalyst,’ who was actually mentioned in the ‘Time Out’ article) and Ian Howarth (director of the ‘Cult Information Centre’), who (in return for undisclosed payments) have (for at least 15 years) conspired to suppress all dissenters to the ‘Amway’ myth by seeking to steer these vulnerable individuals back to the organization for ‘Internal Arbitration,’ rather than direct them to journalists, legislators and law enforcement agents.

Well-informed, private individuals (such as myself) who openly approached law enforcement agencies, legislators and the press, as well as ‘Amway UK’ and the ‘UK DSA,’ to complain about the primary ‘closed-market swindle’, secondary advanced fee fraud and the cultic techniques, have also been threatened with malicious lawsuits (in which, typically, the company officers posed as innocent victims under attack). In my case (in the mid- 1990s) an unsigned letter (written in ‘Amway’s’ thought- stopping jargon) was sent from ‘Amway’s’ UK legal representatives, Baileys, Shaw, Gillette (an international law firm that no longer exists), to various interested parties (including several UK politicians and government regulators). In this, the exact nature my valid accusations were subtly modified then trivialized as ‘foolish notions,’ whilst I was falsely branded as pursuing a ‘vendetta’ against ‘Amway’ – resulting from a ‘financial dispute with my brother’ who was ‘working with Amway.’

To recapitulate, both the UK High Court and UK Appeal Court completely failed to comprehend that, despite all the mystifying mathematics of the so-called ‘Amway Compensation Plan,’ it doesn’t matter in the slightest how the money in ‘Amway’s’ closed-market has been divided; without sufficient, consistent external revenue derived from the authentic retail sale of products to persons who are not agents of ‘Amway UK Ltd.’, it has always been impossible for the overwhelming majority of contributing participants to receive a profit. In simple terms, exactly like ‘Bernard Madoff Securities LLC’, ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ was caught red-handed peddling infinite shares in what could only be its victims’ own finite money. Therefore, by deduction, since 1973, the hidden motive of the creators of the apparently pointless, perpetually-insolvent corporate structure known as ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ must have been to lure UK citizens into a trap.

Sadly, it is impossible to arrive at any reasoned conclusion other than: the decision of the UK High Court (supported by the UK Appeal Court) not to wind up ‘Amway UK Ltd.’ in the interests of public is fundamentally flawed by a glaring error of logic worthy of a lazy schoolboy. Considering the fact that the regulatory authority’s low key legal strategy to have the ‘Amway’ myth quietly expelled from Britain (rather than to try to trigger an expensive, and diplomatically embarrassing, international criminal enquiry) was originally devised by a team of experienced civil servants and their learned advisers, and presented to both the High Court and Appeal Court by one of Britain’s most able barristers, Mark Cunningham QC, and that the linguistically intricate High Court judgement was authored by Lord Justice Norris and the similarly eloquent Appeal Court judgement written by Lord Justice Rix (a distinguished graduate of new College Oxford and Harvard law school) and verified by Lord Justices Rimer and Toulson, the absurdity of this protracted charade almost beggars belief. Indeed most of my correspondents are convinced that the whole episode can only have been a politically-motivated whitewash, because it would seem impossible for so many highly-qualified people to be incapable of proving that ‘Amway’ (an organization that steadfastly pretends to be the ‘World’s Largest Direct Selling Company with millions of Distributors and multi-billion dollar sales,’ but which, demonstrably, mostly only sells to itself via its constantly-changing gangs of insolvent de facto slaves recruiters) is a fraud. Let’s face it, all that these dunces with degrees had to do was get ten individuals each to place ten coins on a table and then ask their Lordships: Norris, Rix, Rimer and Toulson, to share out the resulting one hundred coins so that each contributor received more than his/her original stake.

Copyright David Brear February 2009