Amway suddenly posing as a pious woman

Amway, nowadays, is heavily advertising throughout India spending several millions of rupees. What happened to its principle of no advertisement all these years.

An adage in Sanskrit says, "vriddha naari pativrataa". Suddenly this aged prostitute is posing as a pious woman. It says that there is no entry fee to become a distributor and there is no compulsion to purchase products at entry level. In the headlines of the Advertisement itself Amway says that it is regularizing its business activities. That effectively means it has been illegally and irregularly doing business all these years spanning over a decade. What is the punishment for Amway's illegal business activities all these years and what happened to the stolen money from the gullible all over India and the rest of the countries.

However, its business model is still enrollment which is a banned activity under the provisions of Prize Chits &; Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978. Amway's website states that if a Distributor sells Amway products along with his 'GROUP' they are entitled commission ranging from 6 % to 21 %. From where does this group emerge without enrollment. That is the crux of the racket Amway is indulging in.

Moreover, the price of these products is so exorbitant that no sane person would buy these products unless he is promised with huge returns by way of enrollment.

For instance, the price of Glister toothpaste ranges from Rs. 125 to Rs. 199. No fool would buy these products at such exorbitant price. A 250 ml coconut oil bottle is sold at Rs. 109, a toothbrush for Rs. 116, a 

250 ml shampoo for Rs. 379, one litre Dish washing liquid for Rs. 519. These are only samples. There are more.
Amway also states in its website the Distributor should give a hand written receipt to the purchaser while selling products. Is there any sanctity to the hand written receipt? Who would recognise it? IF there is any patent or latent defect in the product, will the consumer forum recognise it as an authentic receipt? 

The main issue is the money circulation scheme camouflaged with sale of products and services. If Amway believes  its products are of great value, it could sell them in the open market. Anyway, it is advertising heavily spending millions and there is now no justification for its camouflaged activity. It is high time, people realised its nefarious activities and throw Amway out.

Kerala officials have been caught red handed helping 'MLM' racketeers

Shyam

The bosses of the 'Amway' mob continue to behave as though the rest of the world is  too stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, to work out how their insidious racket functions.

The ongoing, extensive 'payment for legislation' racket that Jack Abramoff has admitted once being a part of  in Washington, and which he lately-condemns, is exactly the same as the one which is now evidently appearing in the Indian State of Kerala.

Abramoff has described how, just by introducing precise, but essentially meaningless, language into US federal legislation, it was possible to subvert the democratic process to the financial advantage of anyone who supplied him with piles of loot to bribe greedy US politicians and key members of their advisory staff, with valuable gifts and highly-paid job offers. These traitors to the American Republic, then unlawfully gave Abramoff a free-hand to write the legislation. Abramoff does not hide the alarming fact that he had significant influence in the offices of around one hundred key Washington legislators, and that his ambition had been to own all of them.

The available evidence strongly suggests that the 'Amway' bosses are currently attempting to buy  stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, key legislators in Kerala in order to try to continue to commit the same fraud which they have already paid stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, key Washington legislators to ignore.

The size, and duration, of this (still-largely hidden) scandal is absolutely without precedent, but where the Hell is the mainstream media?

Some more of the obvious questions I have, are:

-  What are the names of the Kerala officials who claim to have written the 'direct selling guidelines,'  but who obviously haven't written them at all?

-  What has been the exact nature of the relationship between these Kerala officials and persons representing 'Amway India Enterprises' from the so called 'Indian Direct Selling Association'  who have been allowed to draft these precise, but essentially meaningless,  'direct selling guidelines' to the financial advantage of the billionaire 'Amway' bosses in the USA?

- How can we get a rigorous corruption investigation started in Kerala? 

David Brear (copyright 2011)

It's been child's play for 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers to buy protection in Washington?

Shyam 

I think that your free-thinking readers should watch this video of a recent, frank interview with ex- Washington 'lobbyist,' Jack Abramoff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMppBhOLXA .

Jack Abramoff, has just served three and a half years in prison. He received this remarkably-lenient sentence after agreeing with US federal prosecutors to plead guilty to serious corruption, conspiracy and tax-evasion charges.  In the television interview, he freely-admits that he owned scores of US politicians and political aides. Although he once earned $20 millions a year, Jack Abramoff now says he works in a pizza restaurant.

Former Republican Representative, Tom DeLay, was supposed to be one of the 'main targets' of the US Justice Department's investigation into Jack Abramoff. However, the US Justice Dept. has (to date) mysteriously ignored the fact that for decades, the 'Amway' mob has corrupted various US politicians, including Tom DeLay. In fact , Tom Delay has been an enthusiatic apologist for the 'Amway' fraud himself.  Sadly, he's just one of a gang of loathsome traitors to the American Republic, who have been paid to allow various racketeers to write the essentially-meaningless federal and State legislation which has permitted 'MLM Income opportunity' fraud to spread (largely-unchallenged) not just in the USA, but also around the world.  In plain language, Tom DeLay is one of the amoral little shits who carries the Stars and Stripes in one hand and the Bible in the other, but who is actually (in part) responsible for the widespread personal, and financial, suffering that is occurring in today (particularly in India) as a result of 'MLM income opportunity' fraud. 

US Justice Dept. officials, managed to discover that Abramoff provided DeLay with trips, gifts, and 'political donations' in exchange for favours to Abramoff's 'lobbying' clients. These included the government of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Internet gambling services, and several Native American tribes. Yet, only two of DeLay's former aides, Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon, as well as Abramoff himself, were charged as a result of this investigation of DeLay. It was reported that Abramoff had no derogatory information about Tom DeLay and did not implicate him as part of his plea bargain with federal prosecutors. However, Abramoff has admitted that he 'lobbied' (i.e. bribed) DeLay to stop legislation banning sex shops and sweatshops that forced employees to have abortions in the Northern Mariana Islands when Abramoff accompanied DeLay on a 1997 trip there. In return for payment, DeLay gave his undertaking not to put the bill on the legislative calendar.

In 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a reform bill to extend the protection of U.S. labour, and minimum-wage, laws to the workers in the Northern Mariana Islands. DeLay (then the House Republican Whip) stopped the House from considering the bill. DeLay later blocked a fact-finding mission planned by Representative Peter Hoekstra, by threatening him with the loss of his sub-committee chairmanship.

DeLay received piles of valuable gifts from Abramoff, including paid golfing holidays to Scotland, concert tickets, and the use of Abramoff's private sports-stadium boxes. DeLay, Tony Rudy, another aide and Abramoff took a trip to London and Scotland. Abramoff paid for the airfare for the trip. 'Lobbyist', Ed Buckham, paid for the hotel at St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.  Abramoff was reimbursed by 'The National Center for Public Policy Research', the non-profit organization that arranged the trip. On the same day that the trip began, The 'National Center' received large 'donations' from two of Abramoff's clients, Internet lottery service 'eLottery, Inc.', and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Both organizations denied that they had intended to pay for DeLay's trip. House rules forbid members to accept travel expenses from 'lobbyists,' and require that members establish the actual sources of funds that non-profit organizations use to pay for trips. DeLay simply denied knowing that 'lobbyists' had paid for travel expenses. In July 2000, DeLay voted against a bill that would have restricted Internet gambling. Both 'eLottery' and the Choctaws opposed the bill. TonyRudy, who was then DeLay's deputy chief of staff, killed the bill by engaging a parliamentary procedure that required a two-thirds majority vote, rather than a simple majority, in order for the bill to pass. Rudy's illegal actions on behalf of Abramoff's clients during this time were mentioned in Abramoff's guilty plea in January 2006.

Michael Scanlon, who had become Abramoff's 'lobbying' partner, plead guilty in November 2005 to conspiracy charges.  Abramoff plead guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy charges on in January  2006, agreeing to co-operate with the government's investigation. His co-operation forced DeLay to abandon his efforts to return to his position as House Majority Leader, a decision that DeLay announced only a few days after Abramoff's plea bargain. Tony Rudy plead guilty in March 2006, to acting illegally on Abramoff's behalf, in exchange for gifts.

Abramoff referred clients to Ed Buckham's 'Alexander Strategy Group' (ASG), a 'lobbying' firm.  Abramoff's clients gave more than $1.5 million to Buckham's 'U.S. Family Network', which then paid ASG more than $1 million. From 1998 to 2002, ASG paid Tom DeLay's wife, Christine, a monthly salary averaging between $3,200 and $3,400. DeLay's attorney, Richard Cullen, first said the payments were for telephone calls that she made periodically to the offices of certain members of Congress seeking the names of their preferred charities, and that she then forwarded that information to Buckham, along with some information about those charities. In early June 2006, Cullen changed his story and said the payments were also for general political consulting she provided to her husband. In total, Christine DeLay was paid about $115,000 directly by ASG, and got another $25,000 via money put into a retirement account by the firm. Her work with ASG has also been the subject of a feeble inquiry by the US Department of Justice, but, mysteriously, no charges have been filed.

In August, 2010, the federal government suddenly dropped its six-year investigation into the web of corruption spun by  the convicted criminal, Jack Abramoff. However, a State case continued in Texas. Last year, Tom DeLay was tried in Austin, Texas. On November 24th,  2010, a Texas jury convicted him of money laundering and conspiracy to money launder. He faced a prison sentence of anywhere from 2 to 20 years for conspiracy and 5 to 99 years, or life, for money laundering. On January 10th, 2011, Texas Senior Judge, Pat Preist, sentenced DeLay to just 3 years in prison.

To add insult to injury, 'Amway's' long-time Washington stooge, immediately filed an appeal.

David Brear (Copyright 2011)

YouTube - Videos from this email

Have Kerala government officials made a public confession of guilt?

Shyam

Years ago I was advised by an American academic not to accuse government officials of being stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, to their faces, because this is counter-productive. Regular readers of Corporate Frauds Watch will know that I didn't follow that timid advice. Indeed, judging by their intellectually-feeble content, perhaps the stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, Kerala government officials who recently came up with these so-called 'Direct Selling Guidelines,' were drunk at the time? Self-evidently, they have allowed this essentially-meaningless document to be written by the de facto agents of US-based 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers; for it is certainly against the interests of the people of Kerala.

The blatantly-obvious point which these stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, Kerala government officials have completely missed, is that, when rigorously-investigated, in all so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' lawful direct selling to the public of goods, and/or services, which these 'Direct Selling Guidelines' seem to describe in theory, cannot be proved to have occurred in practice. However, notice how these 'Guidelines' deliberately use the ambiguous and inaccurate term, 'the consumers,' and not the unambiguous and accurate term, 'the public.'

Thus, if these Kerala government officials had not been stupid, and/or lazy, and/or corrupt, their description of direct selling would have read as follows: 

'Lawful Direct Selling' means any viable system of economic exchange, in which it can be proved by independent quantifiable evidence (in the form of audited accounts) that a significant percentage of non-salaried commission agents under contract to an individual or to a commercial company, have regularly retailed significant quantities of consumer goods, and/or services, directly to the public for a profit outside of traditional fixed retail outlets, usually through explanation, and/or demonstration of the goods, and/or services, by the commission agents.

If these Kerala government officials want to prove their intelligence, diligence and honesty to the readers of Corporate Frauds Watch, then all they have to do is make the neccessary amendments to their essentially-meaningless 'Direct Selling Guidelines' without further delay. Indeed, I have kindly done their job for them, and I will take their failure to act on my common sense advice, as a public confession of guilt. Perhaps they will be frightened that I might send them a bill? 

David Brear (copyright 2011)

Kerala bureaucrats copy & paste IDSA definition of direct selling

The Kerala police has taken initiative to curb the activities of an international crook who has been bleeding the Indian economy by closing down the operations of Amway India. In fact, it is a bold step on the part of the police to stop these fraudulent persons with honesty and integrity. However, the Kerala bureaucrats reversed the hard work done by the police by simply handing over the cheating business back to the crooks.
Indian Direct Selling Association (IDSA) in its website http://www.idsa.co.in/Faqs.html describes What is direct selling?
Direct Selling means the marketing of consumer products/services directly to the consumers generally in their homes or the homes of others, at their workplace and other places away from permanent retail locations, usually through explanation or demonstration of the products by a direct seller.
Now let us take a look at what the Kerala Government said in its guidelines to regulate the direct selling.
Definition:
1. Direct selling
Direct selling means marketing of consumer products/services directly to the consumers generally in their homes or homes of others, at their work place and other places away from the permanent retail locations, usually through explanation or demonstration of the products by a direct seller or by mail order sales.
Here it is amply clear that the bureaucrats who prepared the guidelines are highly influenced by the IDSA that is Amway India. The whole issue is stinking and one can imagine what actually influenced the bureaucrats to prepare such guidelines. I don't believe that it is coincidence and intellectuals thinking alike.
In this backdrop, how could anybody stop these crooks from looting our country.

RMP Infotec cannot dare file writ petition in AP High Court

The crooks who are supporting the fraudulent company RMP Infotec Private Ltd have been spreading canards that the Andhra Pradesh High Court has issued stay orders in favour of RMP Infotec only to cheat some more people into the scam. In fact, the fraudulent company did not file any writ petition in the High Court.

Moreover, the police continue to file criminal cases against the agents and the officials of the company at more places in Krishna district after the Guntur district police filed the criminal case.
A criminal case against RMP Infotec was filed in the Ibrahimpatnam police station in the limits of Vijayawada Police Commissionerate and another criminal case was filed in Chatrayi police station in Krishna district.

In effect, the days are numbered for this fraudulent company in Andhra Pradesh and it may soon fade out in the State. Once the news spreads all over the country, the company might be compelled to close down shop.

These fraudsters, instead of showing their credentials and prove their 'great business model' to the police, are tucking their tails and slinking off. This shows how these cheats have been duping the gullible with the promise of easy and quick money. They are even offering the members perennial income even to their children and grand children.

People should realise that there is nothing like easy and quick money and should not fall prey to the easy and smooth talk of these fraudsters.

Can Kerala legislators begin to understand how 'MLM income opportunity' fraud functions ?

Shyam 

Robert FitzPatrick (whose telephone number has never been a secret) has recently posted this typical conversation between himself and an 'MLM' hopeful.

http://www.falseprofits.com/files/My%20new%20blog%20post.html .

MLM Hopeful: I just read your article, “The 10 Big Lies of Multi-Level Marketing.” I was wondering when you wrote it and if you still stand by it? FitzPatrick: Are you asking me about something in particular?MLM Hopeful: Well, I’ve heard that Amway is now a $10 billion dollar business with millions of customers and has been around since the 1960s, so how could you say it doesn’t work? You probably wrote that article around 2000. But Amway keeps growing.FitzPatrick: Okay, well first of all, Amway is a private company and nobody outside the owners really knows how big it actually is. The numbers could be hype. They aren’t verified. But I think you are saying that because Amway is so large it must be legitimate, right?MLM Hopeful: It’s huge! So how can you write about lies and collapse?FitzPatrick: This is not sarcasm; but we should remember that the biggest and fastest growing Hedge Fund on Wall Street was Bernie Madoff’s and the fastest growing and most respected company in America at one time was called Enron. I’m just reminding you that big or fast-growing do not automatically mean legitimate. In fact, anything growing fast in a Recession should be examined with special skepticism.MLM Hopeful: You predicted Amway would collapse soon.
FitzPatrick: Actually, my article did not predict collapse for Amway, but failure or “collapse” for the recruits. MLM Hopeful: What do you mean? I am pretty sure you predicted Amway would fall apart. (Looks for a reference in the article but doesn’t find one.)FitzPatrick: Here’s the way “collapse” happens at Amway. It offers a business proposition to millions of consumers in which you pay a fee to join; then you buy Amway products…MLM Hopeful: (Interrupts) Buying products is not required!FitzPatrick: Right, but to get bonuses, you have to meet a quota of “points”. To get your points, you buy qualifying Amway products. Most of the Amway salespeople, or IBOs as they are called, do buy Amway’s products to meet their point quota so they can start getting bonuses, at least they hope they will. In fact, the recruits are just about the only people who ever buy Amway products. It’s called “self-consumption.” That’s where Amway gets its money -- from the salespeople, not from customers.MLM Hopeful: Okay. I buy the products because I use them. I buy toothpaste, so why not buy Amway’s toothpaste?FitzPatrick: Nothing wrong with buying Amway products, if you want to. If you think they are good and competitively priced, why not? But my article, and I thought the reason you called me, had to do whether you as a consumer can make money working as an Amway sales rep. You don’t make money from buying products from Amway, right?MLM Hopeful: No, you make money selling the products.FitzPatrick: Okay, now, have you ever seen anyone actually selling Amway products? There are supposed to be hundreds of thousands of Amway sales people in the US. Shouldn’t we see some of them knocking on doors?MLM Hopeful: Actually, I have seen someone. I saw them selling Amway energy drinks.FitzPatrick: Okay, do you think you can make money selling “energy drinks” person to person, one at a time, on your own? It doesn’t seem very feasible, does it, when people can buy energy drinks, usually for less, in any convenience store? But, the facts are that Amway IBOs really don’t make money from selling the products. They make money by first paying a fee to join, then buying products to meet the points quota and then recruiting other people to do the same thing.MLM Hopeful: What’s wrong with that?FitzPatrick: Well, think about it. If you need to recruit 20 people for you to start making money on their purchases, each of those 20 would also need to do the same thing. That would be 400 more for them to recruit. The 400 they recruited would need 8,000 and the 8,000 would need to recruit 160,000 and they would have to find 2.4 million to be profitable. This is not going to happen. The proposition is not possible. Yet, each new person has to tell all the people they recruit that they can always recruit more. That’s why I say the plan is based on a lie. To see what I mean, just use a calculator, and you can see that the sales force cannot continue expanding forever. In our example, we just went five levels deep and got to over 2 million, and those people would then have to recruit half the households in the USA – to become “salespeople”! Who would be their “customers.” It can’t happen. What does happen is that thousands of people invest, fail and quit each year. That’s what I meant about “collapse.” It is the latest recruits who bear the cost. But as long as Amway can replace them, the company itself stays standing. To do that, it must recruit more and more future losers while telling them all, year after year, that it’s the “greatest income opportunity in the world.”MLM Hopeful: I was told that Amway completely changed its model in 2008 and now people are selling the products and making money and that’s why the company has exploded in size! I think you are talking about the past.FitzPatrick: Well, I have studied their income disclosure statistics and it shows plainly that almost no one makes any money and most of the commissions go to the few at the top. Also, more than half of all Amway salespeople still quit in less than a year. Those figures have not changed. Amway makes it money from the salespeople’s purchases. But, almost none of those salespeople make any money themselves. They turn out to be the “end-users.” That’s how Amway makes money -- from the investments of the salespeople, nearly all of whom get no return on that investment.MLM Hopeful: The company has changed!FitzPatrick: It’s true that Amway was sued by consumers in a class action lawsuit and as a result of that suit Amway has offered to pay millions in restitution and to make some changes in their “tools” business and to lower prices on some Amway products. But that would not affect the basic proposition of pay-to-join, buy-products and then recruit-others-to-do-the-same. MLM Hopeful: But even if that’s true, what’s wrong with making money based on recruiting more people? I’ve gone to the meetings and it looks like a lot of people are making money. It must be working!FitzPatrick: Maybe it is working for those up on the stage. Remember, they make money from you, whether you profit or not. They even make money on the fee you paid to hear them speak or if you bought their CDs. But, if the company has 3 million people in the sales forces, when you join, you will be IBO #three-million-one, right? But most of those 3 million are in the very bottom ranks alongside you, and most, like you, just joined this year. They are all starting out just like you with millions of others above them and the need to recruit tens of millions more! All of you now have to find 20 more, or whatever it takes to start making a profit from others who sign up. And, if you do recruit your friends and relatives, you have to work hard to keep them in your downline, because more than half of all Amway IBOs quit each year and 99% never do make a profit. What odds do you think you as IBO #three-million-one really have? MLM Hopeful: (Silence)FitzPatrick: Sorry, are you there? Hello? Hello?
(Dial Tone)

This conversation, in which Robert FitzPatrick gently tried to stimulate the critical, and evaluative, faculties of a typical 'MLM' hopeful, clearly demonstrates how 'Amway,' and its many copy-cats, hide an exploitative, non-rational belief system, tailored to fit the existing beliefs and instinctual desires of ill-informed individuals and, eventually, dissociate them from external reality. It is evidence like this, that legislators in Kerala should be examining in order for them to arrive at a full-understanding of the threat to democracy, and to the rule of law, that 'MLM income opportunity' fraud represents. No matter what rational argument (supported by quantifiable evidence) 'MLM' believers are confronted with, they will invariably continue to deny the reality that it has always been effectively-impossible to earn an overall net-income from participating in a so-called 'MLM income opportunity.'  Thus, the last people whom legislators should be consulting (with regard to this problem), are the deluded victims of 'MLM' or the 'lobbyists' of 'MLM' racketeers. 

In many cases, the victims of 'MLM income opportunity' fraud have been indoctrinated to cut themselves off from all rational persons challenging their non-rational beliefs.

David Brear (copyright 2011)