MLM Absurdities: Due Diligence is NOT Analysis Paralysis!

One of the more subtle reality inversion techniques used by scammers (and unethical sales people), and cloned by clueless MLM noobs, is misrepresenting "due diligence" as "analysis paralysis". 

Analysis paralysis usually refers to an organization attempting to analyze a certain proposed project or change and the effect it would have, but so much time and resource was spent on the analysis that the project never was actually adopted.  For an individual, it could be that s/he is attempting to reach a decision, but that decision has so many factors s/he was overwhelmed by combination of scope and interactions and end up making no decision at all.

However, a decision to "not participate because I clearly have no idea what I am getting into" is a decision, and reaching that conclusion is NOT analysis paralysis.

Yet many MLM veterans and noobs will mischaracterize their moment of commitment as "overcoming analysis paralysis". Here is one example from MLMBlonde(dot)com:

Or they may have been polite but also declined and you were crushed
SO you went into what I call "Analysis Paralysis".
You began to question if this could work for you. You start to analyze
your decision.
YOU FREEZE. You begin to think something may be WRONG with you
or you made a bad decision, after all, if those closest to you don't "GET
IT", how you possible speak to a stranger.
You sit back and think and think , and then you just NEVER
get up the nerve to move forward. You lose your excitement. You
just DO NOTHING. 

The problem is MLMblonde had NOT described analysis paralysis. She described "self-doubt paralysis", but slapped the "analysis paralysis" label on it. 

And she's not alone in doing so. Many MLM noobs seem to think any sort of doubt is analysis paralysis, even a full on analysis (i.e. "trust, but verify"). 

And due diligence is NOT doubt. 

Bad Argument: I Only Listen to People Who Made Money

One of more "cultish" arguments raised by followers of a particular scheme (starts with V) is "I don't have to listen to you. I listen to people who made money! How much did you make, huh?"

A somewhat more polite version would be, "If I want to play basketball I want to be like Michael Jordan. If I want to play football I want to be like Peyton Manning. If I want to make money I'll want to be someone who has made lots of money, such as my leader _______ in ______."

This sounds like it made sense... For about 3 seconds.

Why would you NOT want to emulate the top billionaires in the US of A... like Bill Gates (Microsoft), Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), or Larry Ellison (Oracle), or heck, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)? Why would you suddenly lower your goalpost? What sort of crazy argument is that?

It's like saying, "I want to be the best in the field... EXCEPT when it comes to money!"

WTF?! Man... WTF.

But wait, there's more!

Just what *are* your odds in Herbalife? (With bonus Kiyosaki debunking)

Apparently some Herbalife distributors were spreading this on Facebook

(following picture courtesy of SaltyDroid)

Notice the graph says "Rich Kid Smart Kid?" We'll get back to that.

Let's assume that the odds are accurate... for the Herbalife portion... But there's something SERIOUSLY not mentioned in the odds... That the odds are NOT evenly distributed, like you'd been lead to assume.

That's right... Some people have far better odds in Herbalife than the average distributor.

The relatives of those already in "President's Club" have much better odds. It's an insider's game, not "equal opportunity" like you'd been lead to believe.

Network Marketing? Or Cargo Cult Marketing?

Ever heard of Cargo Cults? No? It's a cult (alternative religion) that evolved during WW2 in Malenesia (little Pacific Islands) where the natives evolved a religion based on airplanes dropping huge amounts of cargo out of the sky and if they pray and march and wear the right uniforms and build "runways" or "fake airplanes" the great plane will come and give them more cargo. And yes, they're still around.

Cargo Cult of the Pacific, via http://www.rusticaobsessa.com/?p=257

Those of us who know a little history would realize that those were WW2 supply missions where transport planes drop supplies for our troops that probably went off course for one reason or another.

Cargo cults existed for 50 years and no great planes have appeared since WW2. Yet it persists. Why? Because they *wanted* to believe, even though it doesn't work and hadn't worked for 50 years. They keep doing the same thing.

Richard Feynman coined the term "Cargo Cult Science", where people are doing apparently scientific research, studies, theories, etc. trying to explain some problems and propose solutions, except they have tried for decades, and nothing has worked. He was referring to criminal science (how to reform criminals) and pseudo-science such as ESP. Things have NOT improved for those fields. It's gotten WORSE.

Network Marketing is the same way. It is really "cargo cult marketing" because in most cases most network marketers only know how to indoctrinate as many people as possible and hope they make you rich. All the junior reps are recruited through "edification" of the top reps, and was given the message: monkey see, monkey do. (i.e. you can be me if you do what I do) even though there is no proof that doing what they did is the key to success.

Only a few PROFESSIONALS realize the truth and try to do it the right way. VAST MAJORITY of people are doing it wrong, and they are either ignorant... or simply don't care. They see their own success as "proof" of their own brilliance, not realizing they are simply lucky... or good at OTHER things... such as recruiting or cult indoctrination.

And that's exactly what a cargo cult does. They do what their "ancestors" did even though there is no proof and no reason it would work.

But there's more... the CULT aspects.

BREAKING NEWS: WCM777 admits being an ILLEGAL US business, may be involved in insulting Muslims?

Following message appeared on WCM777's Hong Kong website

...However, because the sale of securities failed to fully comply with laws and regulations in United States, our operations in the U.S. will be on hold until further notice...

This is a full out admission... almost a full week after the sanctions by US State of Massachusetts had been made public (despite the notice back in September)  that WCM777 is illegal fraud; telling people it's NOT securities when it surely is securities.

Frankly, WCM777 had admitted such back when it closed its US branch in Southern California, as previously reported, almost two MONTHS ago.

And it's also interesting that they left in September... At the same time they'd been investigated by Massachusetts.

Why leave when you don't even know the results? The obvious conclusion is WCM777 *knew* they're illegal, even before they saw the settlement with state of Massachusetts.

Shouldn't WCM777 have halted US operations back in September, instead of now? Did they just admit that they operated illegally for another 2 months? 

But there is even MORE bizarre behavior... Such as claiming to have "founded" a TV station ALREADY founded years ago... and one involved in a MAJOR religious controversy!

Even More Signs You Are In a Sales Cult

An article in Hong Kong revealed a standard script given to pyramid selling members to recruit even more members...

You may be in a sales cult if...

• You are "sharing" an opportunity to your friend, not selling him something
• Your doing your friend a favor by "sharing" this great opportunity
• You are intentionally keeping something hidden (but not outright mysteries)
• You only have 1 friend at a time (for the opportunity pitches)
• You consider any adult not asleep as potential "friend" to share opportunity with
• You only talk in elevator speeches (entire pitch is within 60 seconds)
• You handle rejection by being magnanimous: remember me, it's okay you're not ready

Wait, there's more!

BREAKING NEWS: WCM Ming Xu Threatens Siemens and skeptic on Twitter with Lawsuit

Generally, when someone's statement was refuted by no less than an official press release, most people give a proper explanation. Not Ming Xu of "World Capital Market", otherwise known as "US Vantone Investment Bank" (except it's not a bank). Instead, he threatens to sue people he may have misrepresented as doing business with him, as well as people asking questions.

Yep, this guy, who uses the Chinese name of a SCAM COMPANY VNTI (which he said he helped setup), is threatening to sue Siemens, the global conglomerate and a skeptic who's asking questions did WCM777 really signed an agreement with Siemens for cloud storage solutions.

When one of the sub-schemes in WCM, called WCM777, claimed have cloud storage and such powered by Siemens IT technology, per WCM777's own press release and news dated November 2012, Siemens released a statement stating that it is clearly IMPOSSIBLE as they SOLD their IT division in 2011!

(See Details here)

17 Signs that You're In a Sales Cult, or How a Sales Cult is like the Borg

Patrick Stewart as Locutus, the Borg assimilated
Jean-Luc Picard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A sales cult is a deformed "sales team", that uses cult tactics to keep and grow its membership, to take over its member's lives to the point where the members essentially cuts off most ties from his normal social circle all in the name of "success".

At what price? Are you really joining the Borg Collective instead?

Following are the signs that you're in a sales cult, not a sales organization. How many did you spot?

• I chant and sing every morning as part of a group "warmup"
• I have a mentor who shadows me almost 24/7. 
• I am always looking out for new recruits, whom I hope to mentor one day
• I am fully involved in my job / opportunity and have no time for frivolous stuff, like relationships
• I buy my clothes and stuff on credit because I haven't made any money (soon...)
• I think my partner / friend / family does NOT support me fully in my job / opportunity
• I have drifted apart from my regular partner, friends, and family
• I attend all sorts of after-work social events by my sales leader and mentor
• I am often very tired as I don't sleep much (I wonder how "they" do it...)
• I think my partner does NOT understand how important my job/opportunity is to me
• I think my partner does NOT understand how hard I am working
• I am not stopping for anyone or anything (including "friends", "family", "partner", and more)
• I cite my daily or weekly accomplishments to the team and I am PROUD of it. 
• I feel very sad if I don't hit my daily / weekly goals
• I am jealous of my sales leader's success and paycheck and fancy car and fancy cloths
• I have some doubts, but I don't dare show it. I am sure it's a phase that will pass. 
• I can't quit. I will let my leader and the team down if I do. They'll tell me I'm not a quitter. I am not. 

How many of these apply to you? Read on to understand why these are signs of a cult, not a business.

Below you will find two people discussing the signs above... a cult expert, and a former member of the Borg collective (this is kinda humorous, but rather dark humor).

What's common among Pigeon Chess, Scam, and the Matrix? Victims.

What's common between pigeon chess,
scam, and the Matrix?
 (Photo credit: Bill & Mark Bell)

Recently someone reminded me of this Internet meme: Pigeon Chess. It basically goes like this:

Arguing with [Insert Group Name] is like playing chess with a pigeon: no matter how good I am, the pigeon will knock over the pieces, craps all over the board, then fly off and claim victory with its flock

You can find various versions of this with various group names substituted, from retards to Christians to Mac Users, but what this really applies is a bit of a double entendre... as a "pigeon" is also slang for an "easy mark" or a "dupe", i.e. a gullible person, easily scammed.

And nowhere is this more obvious with pseudo-MLM scam victims, who refuse to recognize they had been cheated even when all the signs are right in front of them.

I've discussed "3 blind men and elephant" analogy before, as well as "ignorance is not bliss", but I thought I'd just hit this theme one MORE time to make my point.

Scam victims, i.e. a pigeon, often believe in the scam so much that nothing you tell them will convince them that they had been scammed. Instead, they'll insult you, refuse to listen to you, and claim they had "won" their argument with you by leaving.  They are much like Cypher... preferring the Matrix to reality. or to steal another catchphrase... "You can't handle the truth!" (from the movie "A Few Good Men")

Just like the pigeon who will knock over the pieces, crap all over the board, and fly off to its flock squawking victory.

Let's look at a few examples.

BREAKING NEWS: Old Chinese News From 2007 Revealed Ming Xu had been defrauding Americans back in 2007!

Following is my PARTIAL translation of the article at 

http://www.sipo.gov.cn/mtjj/2007/200804/t20080401_361337.html

http://finance.sina.com.cn/Olympic2008/news/20070918/11103989452.shtml

The article is about fraud involving Olympics in China, and "Ming Xu" is a part of it! I'll just translate the section that had to do with this, but you're welcome to read either. 

就在北京全民迎奥运活动组委会的书法征集活动在秦皇岛受阻、灰溜溜地撤出北戴河后不久，闹剧却仍在继续——这一次，该组委会的名字又悄然出现在了美国。

After “Beijing All people welcome Olympic Activity Organization” illegal fundraiser was stopped in ChingHuanDao, and quietly left the BeiDaiHo region, hilarity continued, as this group managed to reappear in the US.

　　据中国日报(Chinese Daily)发自洛杉矶的报道，5月17日，北京全民迎奥运组委会美国分会暨百万华侨迎奥运筹委会的发言人徐明表示，将开展公益活动支持北京奥运。

According to Chinese Daily out of Los Angeles, US, May 17th (2007?) Bejing All People Welcome Olympic Committee US branch and Million Overseas Chinese Committee spokesman Ming Xu said he will start fundraising activity to support Beijing Olympics.

　　该报道称，徐明发起的中国奥运基金会中，已经接收到了最少数十万美元的捐款，其中包括一家叫康瑞的企业提供的50万美元现金或等值商品，以及一家叫国际爱福仁信用卡公司年利润的1%。

According to report, Ming Xu started this Chinese Olympic Fundraising Committee had raised at least several hundred thousand USD donations, including one KangRei 康瑞 (NOTE: Careux.com, no longer active)  provided 500000 cash or equivalent merchandise, and 1% annual profit pledge from International AiFuRen 国际爱福仁 (Affluen.com)  Credit Card company 

　　据记者调查，徐明是注册在美国加州的美国万通投资银行的董事长。于是，记者来到该公司中国代表处，见到了万通网站上所说的中国区首席代表赵昂，不过赵昂表示：“名为首代、实则朋友关系，我们不是靠他们供养。只是徐明多次向我提出要求，我才把他的公司牌子挂了出来。”赵自己是银信中联(北京)投资顾问有限公司的总经理。

According to reporter’s investigation, Ming Xu is CEO of “US WangTong Investment Bank” (worldcapitalmarket.com) registered in California. Reporter came to the office in China, and found WangTong Website’s “top representative in China” Ang Zhao. Zhao however, replied “Top rep? Just a friend. I’m not employed by him. He asked me and asked me, and I acquiesced, and put his company name out.” Zhao is a manager at China Galaxy Investments.

　　赵最初说，北京全民迎奥运活动组委会美国分会是美国华人自发的活动，是在美国独立的活动，与北京的组织没有任何合作。

Zhao said, US branch of that org was started by Chinese Americans. It had nothing to do with the organization in Beijing.

　　后来，赵昂又改口称，春天时徐明收到了全民迎奥运活动组委会的聘书后，在美国发起了这个活动，并且有意发展到中国，“当时我很郑重地告诉他，在中国落地必须要经过奥组委的同意。之后他的活动也就停止了。”

However, later Zhao changed his story. Apparently in spring Ming Xu got some sort of a delegation letter from Beijing authorizing him to start US Branch, so it can spread back to China later. Zhao said, “At the time, I told him if he wish to land in China, he really need to get permission from the Beijing Olympic Committee. Later he stopped his activities.”

　　然而，杨光明告诉记者，对这个美国分会他一无所知。杨声称，那是在他本人毫不知情的情况下，美籍华人徐明在美国冒充了全民迎奥运活动组委会的名称，“在海外进行圈钱活动”。

However, MingGuang Yang (of Beijing committee) told reporter, that he knew NOTHING about this US branch. Yang said this American Chinese Ming Xu is an imposter using the Beijing All People Welcome Olympic organization name "to steal funds overseas".

Evil MLM: Spend Your Own Time on MLM, not your "day job" Time!

Sometimes, people in MLM just let things get to their head, and they forgot all about ethics, morality, conflict of interest, and so on. It's clear that if you have a side job, you should never spend any time or resources of your "day job" on it. Yet that's exactly one one Fort Collins school administrator was caught doing... using his school PC, his school email, during school hours, for his Organo Gold MLM distributorship. He even wrote a "business plan" where he plans to promote the stuff to the teachers (the people he's in charge of) and more. The local teacher's union is appalled and wants the guy fired. School District is keeping mum about it.

Chuck DeWayne is an executive direction of HR for the Poudre School District, in Fort Collins, CO. He's in charge of over 4000 full and part-time PSD employees. And he's making $141820 a year. However, that's apparently not enough, and he planned to use the power at his disposal to add to that income by pushing Organo Gold, according to local 7NEWS.

Evil MLM: Get Payday Loan to Join MLM? WTF?!

Editor's note: This is a start of a new, and hopefully continuing series of what NOT to do in MLM, under the tag "Evil MLM". Basically, this is the sort of bad behavior that gave MLM a bad rap (much of it deserved).

I've heard of people spending their severance pay to join MLM. In fact, this is done quite often in Israel, where when you are discharged from the required service in the Israeli armed forces, you're given a severance pay to help you get back into civilian life, and some sleazy MLMers have gone as far as park their fancy car, glitzy bling, and pretty girls next to discharge stations to snatch up recruits as they walk out. Too bad their leader is a f***ing cult leader who pushes Herbalife. 

But here's something more disturbing, closer to home... a "leader" in Vemma telling people on Facebook, that they should not worry about not having any money to join Vemma as a poor college kid. Instead, they should go take out a payday loan (with their usurious interest rates) and use that cash to join Vemma, and immediately do a full court press, to get the money back so the check doesn't bounce.

Don't believe me? Here's proof on Facebook:

Coalition Petitions FTC to Fully Investigate Herbalife, includes dozens of experts on various subjects

This just came up on my news alert: Coalition Petitions FTC to fully investigate Herbalife.

Among the names you'll find some familiar names if you are attuned to the MLM "controversy"

• Robert Fitzpatrick of pyramidschemealert.org, long-time opponent of MLM model, believes all MLMs are effectively pyramid schemes. I agree with him 90%. 
• Dr. Jon M. Taylor, who cooperated with Fitzpatrick on many of the papers, but also has his own anti-MLM website
• David Brear, another long-time vocal opponent of MLM, who also believes that all MLMs are pyramid schemes, albeit disguised. He and I have butted heads despite we agree 90% of the time. His blog is at mlmtheamericannightmare.blogspot.com (I may have misspelled that)
• Shyam Sundar, David Brear's counterpart in India, runs corporatefraudswatch.blogspot.com and covers mainly Indian scams, but also reposts Brear's blogposts
• Doug Brooks, who had started multiple class-action lawsuits against multiple MLM companies

Some notable anti-scam bloggers are there:

• Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid, whose stance on scams and pyramid schemes are well known and he considers MLMs in the same arena. He can be found at saltydroid.info
• Omri Shabat, of glancingweb. Omri had been writing superbly sarcastic and caustic blog posts about various Internet marketers and small time scammers, the type that was covered in The Verge's "Scamworld" series, for years

Cult Sales Conviction Upheld in France. Is US Next?

French Court recently handed down a decision that upheld conviction of Church of Scientology and its bookstores of preying upon members in the 1990's by pushing them into buying books... One victim claimed she was pushed into buying books and various devices totaling over 20000 Euros, including "a meter that measures mental energy". Court ordered the church to pay over 600000 Euros in fines and damages. Church itself claims its religious freedom is being trampled and vows to appeal to European Union court.

While I have no desire to debate whether Scientology is a cult or not (the French say it is, so debate it with them) I wish to point out that cult sales is a real problem. 

Cult Sales, as opposed to normal "sales job", is sales job with a dose of cult indoctrination to keep you producing, often with your own money. And many network marketing companies, along with a few abusive direct sales companies, are essentially cult sales companies.  Whether their products are real or valuable is irrelevant.

Some signs of cult sales:

• Always hiring / looking out for new blood
• Rah-rah chants and songs in the morning to get you "pumped up"
• Daily or weekly confession / recognition of sales results (or lack of)
• Shadow new recruits with a "mentor" (and you will later shadow a noob, treat noobs to social events, indoctrinate them just like they did to you)
• Fake it till you make it (fund your own attire, even before you can afford it)
• Overwork you, always selling around the clock, portrayed as "dedication"
• Dominate off-work hours too with "social" events and training and such
• If you don't recruit you're not "dedicated" enough to the company
• Guilt-trip if you tried to quit

Are Serial MLMers Insane, by a common cliche definition?

There was a quote often mis-attributed to Albert Einstein:

The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results

However, the quote had been mis-attributed to a variety of people including Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, and others. However, its real origin is from a Narcotics Anonymous newsletter dated 1981 (scroll to page 11). Which means this is a quote about addiction.

Which makes it oddly appropriate about MLMers, specifically, about SERIAL MLMers, those people who keep joining one MLM after another, looking for "success" and kept spending money on the products, on his or her upline's advice, always having an excuse (the leader made a mistake, the market wasn't ready for us...)  As they keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result.

One such example was the "confessimonial" on SaltyDroid... a story by "Roger Wilco". RW described a relationship with a woman who was heavily into MLM, spent well over 200K into various MLMs over 7 or so years, and in the end, chose MLM instead of him, never finding any success.

Addicted people, by certain "colloquial" definition, are "insane" because they are driven by their addiction into making choices that no "ordinary" people would make.

And MLMers, similarly, are "addicted" to MLM that they make choices that no "ordinary" people would make. That is a form of insanity.

MLM Mythbusting: "If I can succeed you can too" is a double myth

One of the most persistent myths in MLM is "If I can succeed you can too", usually spoken by a relatively higher-ranked guy in the MLM. However, this is a VERY MISLEADING statement. The word "can" here is an equivocation.  The IMPLICATION here is a very high percentage (100%?) of people who do the MLM as hard as he does will succeed. The reality is the actual people who succeed like the speaker is only a few percentage of total.

Let's analyze this in two parts... The question of "succeed", then the fallacy of "you can too".

What is definition of "success" in MLM? 

What exactly is "success" in MLM? It's usually to make a comfortable living. Since MLM often claim to be replacing the conventional job and so on... Let's define it as... earn more than US median personal income, how's that?

So what's the US median personal income? According to Wikipedia, that's about 32K as of 2005.  (see graph to right)

So how many people in, say Vemma, makes more than 32K a year?

Good question. They don't know. In fact, NONE of the "mainstream" MLMs know exactly how much money their brand partner / affiliate / consultant / distributor / whatever makes. All the company know is how much commission the company had paid out. (And this is actually bad for the company, as there's no proof of "retail" activity, but they don't really care)

Let's just look at what data's available, okay? So, what's Vemma's stats?

Social Cost of MLM: How it exploits group mentality and cult indoctrination

There is a new article over at SaltyDroid which includes a true story by a member whose handle is Roger Wilco, and he has a sad story to tell. However, before I send you off to read it, I need to get my point across: MLM has a very heavy social cost, and some MLM leaders are exploiting their downlines through cult indoctrination and group mentality (whether they are aware of it is a good question) that they basically rose to success on their member's backs.

Much of MLM makes fun of people in regular jobs (which EVERYBODY have at one point or another) as a deadend, wage slave, and so on, while those in MLM will succeed, be their own boss, blah blah blah, which is a psychological attack, on both the company and personal (upline to downline) level to a person's self-worth and self-identity. The overall message is simple: do what MLM says, you no longer think for yourself. All of your thoughts came from the MLM and your upline. You became a parrot and sycophant without even realizing it.

And now the alienation starts.

Alarms Raised at Colleges Over Pyramid Allegations of MLM Vemma

Vemma Product Photography and Ad
(Photo credit: themichaelminer)

Vemma is a potions company that two years ago created "Verve" energy drink and came up with a strategy to get college kids (and for a while, high school kids) to promote it as brand partners, which is just another fancy name for affiliate (i.e. consultant / distributor / member / whatever). However, they need to buy a case, then try to sell it.  And they're lured in with promise of "easy sell, everybody needs energy drinks" and rewards such as "free car" (with a lot of fine print).

Energy drinks are not what they cracked up to be, and Vemma reps are making a LOT of potentially misleading claims, like their Verve is "healthy" (and other energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster are not). It's been analyzed that they contain roughly the same amount of caffeine, the primary active ingredient, so any claim that Vemma's drinks are healthy(-ier?) is unfounded. Caffeine can kill people, and proliferation of energy drinks made that even more widespread.

Previously MLM Skeptic have covered the energy drink market, and found it to be in a world already saturated with conventionally marketed products (namely Red Bull, Rockstar, Monster, etc.) and thus viability is in doubt.

Now we find Verve pushers basically making up bull**** about how *their* drink is healthier than other drinks when it contains the same active ingredients, in the same portions and thus is just as dangerous.

But Vemma's Verve is doing something else: burning through participant's pocketbooks. And most participants are college kids (who have little enough money as is)

Internet, MLM and FOMO... is that what Rippln's about?

As I was updating my Rippln review I also listened to some podcasts, and one of them mentioned FOMO, or "fear of missing out", and how this social phobia is driving some obsessive behavior such as checking on Facebook / LinkedIn / Twitter constantly, in fear of missing some news updates, social happenings, or such that would somehow instantly make you a pariah among peers. Then the figurative lightbulb lit up over my head: 

Rippln is just a FOMO exploiter. 

Rippln's entire idea is to team up with somebody and market THEIR stuff to its constituents, and if some of the constituents buy the stuff, their upline(s) get a cut of the profit. But this is basically exploiting FOMO, where you subscribe to Rippln and hope you don't miss some special deal. 

Unfortunately for Rippln, in order to make sure that there's enough PROFIT to be split bazillion ways among what they claim to be 1.4 million ripplers, thus far Rippln has picked a couple duds. 

TelexFree just gotten even more bizarre... to the observers

TelexFree claims to be a communciations provider (sells VOIP packages), but also offers "AdCentral", which is a clone of Ad Surf Daily "auto surf" ponzi. They were recently issued an injunction by court in Acre, Brazil to stop paying the recruiters.

And the TelexFree participants went absolutely bananas.

According to PatrickPretty.com, Brazilians are spamming all major Western media  Facebook presenses, including NBC, CBS, CNN, NYTimes, etc. claiming they are being persecuted.

Some even made Youtube Videos, which are rather entertaining, but hilarious when you consider their source:

• One video used "cattle encircle to protect calf from lions" metaphor to tell judges to leave them alone, stealing the video from NatGeo in South Africa. 

• Another guy walked into the virtual office (provided by Regus) of TelexFree in Massachussets, US, and pretend that the entire building works for TelexFree. As he's speaking Portuguese, nobody challenged him. 

• Another video had a member cosplay as Rambo (with an LED lighted "weapons") claiming to defend democracy (i.e. TelexFree) and ask people to 'stand up for their rights'