Peddling 'redemption' from a 'Doomsday' fiction, is one of the oldest frauds known to man

Shyam

As this recent news item from Taiwan demonstrates, the peddling of expensive 'redemption' from a 'Doomsday' fiction (tailored to fit the spirit of the times), remains one of the most-effective methods for manipulative crooks to part vulnerable individuals from external reality and from their cash. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13253512 .

Almost 17 years ago, a thought-provoking article was published in the London listings magazine, 'Time Out,' entitled 'Hidden Persuaders' http://www.skepdic.com/timeout.html . The author was, news editor, Tony Thompson. Tellingly, 'Time Out' had been threatened with a malicious lawsuit for daring to reveal that 'Amway' recruiters were like Evangelists, but who preached a perverted 'Gospel of Prosperity'. 'Amway' recruiters first painted a bleak picture of 40 years hard work leading to poverty (the financial eqivalent of Doomsday), but they then offered redemption through joining their group and duplicating a 2-5 year plan of self-consumption and recruitment leading to 'Total Financial Freedom' (the financial equivalent of 'Paradise') whilst excluding everything which, and everyone who, challenged the authenticity of the kitsch 'Amway' Utopia.

In the early 1990s, increasing numbers of destitute and dissociated 'Amway' victims had started to come forward in the UK. These ill-informed people suspected that they had been involved with a cultic group, but they didn't really know what characteristics essentially identified the phenomenon. Fearing that their monopoly of information might be lost, the response of the billionaire bosses of the 'Amway' mob, was to order their UK agents to co-opt the 'cult advisers' mentioned in the Time Out article. Ian Howarth and Graham Baldwin had previously intimated to Tony Thompson that 'Amway' was indeed a form of cult. However, after they had been offered lucrative contracts to work as 'consultants on cultism' to 'Amway UK Ltd.,' Messrs. Baldwin and Howarth changed their tune and became part of 'Amway's' bosses' monopoly of information. When anyone, including myself, made enquiries about 'Amway,'  they repeated reality-inverting propaganda which had been fed to them by the corporate officers of 'Amway UK Ltd.' They falsely claimed that the cultic practises within the ranks of 'Amway' in the UK had nothing to do with the company itself and that the company, in fact, wanted to prevent such practices. 

Ian Howarth is an unqualified, former cult adherent, whilst Graham Baldwin is an absurd charlatan who once awarded himself the meaningless title of 'Chaplain' and who, subsequently, made his living by pretending to be a former agent of UK military intelligence who is a specialist in the field of brainwashing techniques.

We now know that Messrs Baldwin and Howarth, and successive corporate officers of 'Amway UK Ltd.' and those of the so-called 'UK Direct Selling Association,' concealed the truth in return for stolen cash, whilst hundreds of millions of dollars was taken from hundreds of thousands of UK citizens who were being churned through the 'Amway' closed-market swindle and related advance fee frauds. Only when 'Amway UK Ltd.' faced a low-level government investigation, were two so-called 'Diamond Distributors,' Jerry Scriven and Patrick Gregory, expelled from the organization for breaking its alleged 'rules.' For decades, these grinning racketeers had been running the advance fee frauds in the UK on behalf of Dexter Yager in the USA with the assistance of the corporate officers of 'Amway UK Ltd.' When, as a result of my persistent complaints, 'Amway UK Ltd.,' finally came before the UK High Court in 2008, one of its company officers submitted a written statement in which she claimed that the company itself had no knowledge of any illegal practises within its 'distributor' ranks and that, even if it had known, the company was not the police and had no powers to investigate or prevent crime. However, these crimes were clearly explained in Time Out in 1994, when the corporate officers of 'Amway UK Ltd.' first attempted to repress the truth, but then promised to prevent them in the future.

When I first attempted to complain about the same crimes, I, too, was threatened with a malicious lawsuit by aggressive attorneys acting for 'Amway UK Ltd.'

David Brear (copyright 20011)