MLMSkeptic Investigates: Why is Valentus illegal in the UK? (it's the ingredients)

Recently, it was all over the news (cite 1) (cite 2) (cite 3) that former finalist for Miss England and FHM model Charlotte Thompson was "busted" selling 'slimming coffee' and got a visit from the UK Trading Standards Officers and told to stop her business.  She went online to vent. But what you won't find in these news articles is WHY did Trading Standards make a visit to her home?

MLMSkeptic investigates this little conundrum, by exploring what Valentus did in the aftermath passing blame, then check the sources from Valentus itself, and the statements by Ms. Thompson, then checking the relevant UK laws and interpretations, to see if there is ANY hope for Valentus, in UK, and in rest of Europe.

Recently, when forced to address the issue, Valentus corporate "Director of International Registration", Terry Recknor, gave a webinar.  Ms. Recknor initially blamed Ms. Thompson for spamming thousands of people, implying that was the reason for the visit from Trading Standards, but she soon dropped this bomb:

What you need to understand is, the products technically are illegal because we’re not registered yet.

This seems to imply that as soon as Valentus registered their products in the UK, then there would be no more problems. In the meanwhile, there are suggestions that recruitment in UK and rest of Europe are continuing as if nothing was wrong, despite warning from Ms. Thompson that dealing in Valentus is apparently illegal.

So, what is the truth? Let's investigate first, what does UK Trading Standards actually do?  In the case of their visit to Ms. Thompson, it is to offer:

• Business advice: Trading standards offer a range of business advice and enforcement policies for all traders and businesses. These range from issues regarding licensing to consumer protection laws.

So presumably, when you combine the various statements given by Ms. Thompson, Ms. Recknor, and explanations, one should conclude that

• Valentus SlimRoast coffee needs to be registered in UK
• Lack of registration is a violation of consumer protection laws
• Ms. Thompson's spam alerted Trading Standards to let her know

But is this true?  Searching UK Food Laws (Food Safety Act 1990, Food Standards Act 1999, and Food Hygiene Regulations 2006) brought up nothing about registering coffee or similar drink mixes and such.  There had to be a different reason.

Which brings us back to "consumer protection", and what other areas does that cover. This was made clear at a different Trading Standards page:

We make sure that people are not misled by claims, prices, descriptions and other selling techniques used by traders when they are selling goods and services.

As it wasn't about registration, let us investigate whether Valentus made any misleading claims. But what constitutes misleading claims under UK law? As SlimRoast is about weight loss, I googled "weight loss claim UK", and that brought me to Advertising Standard Authority, or asa.org.uk and their guidance on slimming guidelines for the press (PDF).

MLM Basics: Why do so many MLM noobs don't understand "referral sales" is illegal?

It seems an MLM noob is very fond of her comp plan, which she described as

... I can find 3 people who also want sustainable <item> my order is then FREE

She doesn't realize that this is ILLEGAL. Yes, I said it. It is ILLEGAL.

This is called "referral sales", and it can be described as

1. Seller offer to prospective buyer a consideration (discount / rebate / commission, etc.) 
2. for a sale (or lease) of item from seller to buyer
3. the buyer must provide sellers list of potential customers
4. the consideration (see 1) is contingent on seller be able to make additional sales/lease to one or more of the potential customers (see 3)

And all four elements are in the quote found earlier. Let's check it again, with the elements highlighted.

... I can find 3 people (3) who also want sustainable <item>(4) my order (2) is then FREE (1)

And yes, this is ILLEGAL. In all 50 states of the US, and in all European countries, and Australia, and so on and so forth.

And you'd be surprised how many companies engage in this ILLEGAL behavior, and its affiliates are completely unaware they are being defrauded.

Can you trust this new company called TresMore? Investigation Part 1

Recently, MLMSkeptic came upon something called TresMore. It sparked my interest because it is heavily marketed toward Asians, with a Chinese name 特利多 (te-li-duo, lit: special profit plenty) and websites in Taiwan, China, and even Malaysia, this thing was basically promising $$$$ for merely shopping, which, as you can imagine, can't possibly work. The premise of paying 20% of retail value just to get your shopping data makes absolutely no sense! Even supermarkets and such don't give you 20%... more like... 2% and coupons.

In fact, this is almost an exact clone of a suspect scheme call Saivian. You can do research on that yourself. Or just read the BehindMLM review.

Researching Tresmore

First, let's look up Tresmore.com  Wow, all these "business partners", eh?

Screencap of Tresmore.com  official Tresmore website. Claims all these
 are business partners. But which ones are real, and which ones are fake? You may be
surprised at the results, once we do a little research, and you can verify for yourself. 

But which one is real? And which ones are pretenders? Let's look a little closer.

TresMore address is 3235 Satellite Blvd, Ste 290, Duluth, GA 30096

That means they rent an office from that building. Suite 290, remember?

Now let's look up their corporate info via Georgia State Website  https://ecorp.sos.ga.gov/BusinessSearch

Registered 3/11/2017 by Chae Chang, why 290B vs 290?
What about filing history?

Well, there is a Tresmore LLC... registered March 2017 by a Chae Chang. Hmmm...  However, if you go into filing history and access the company formation papers, you'll see another name, Sang Lee.

Two people responsible, a Chae Chang, and a Sang Lee, for Tresmore. 

Let's go down the list. So what is EsolutionTG? (item 1)

Critical Analysis of a R+F consultants denial that R+F is a pyramid scheme

Recently my news feed came across an R+F consultant (that's Rodan and Fields, an MLM cosmetics brand) denying that R+F is a pyramid scheme. Does her denial make sense?

She started out by casting a wide net, basically stating "I hear that from time to time... (some people) believe RF is a scheme... (but) RF isn't like that"

Then she immediately went into defensive dilemma, which means "if you say it to my face, I will assume that 1) you don't know me and I don't know you, or 2) you don't know what you're talking about"

But does the author know what she's talking about?

She never explained what a pyramid scheme is, or how R+F is not like that. She simply claimed that R+F is a legitimate company. But that's interesting are the two factors she cited in her denial.

We are different: really?

According to the author, "If you’re looking at a company’s payroll by levels of income, it’s probably going to resemble a pyramid. The owner is at the top and earns the highest salary, everyone else trickles down.  Right out of the gate, we are different."

Basically, the author is saying that R+F is NOT like a traditional company where the owner is NOT earning the highest salary, isn't it?

Unfortunately, it seems the author is merely half-right. Because R+F is run by Chairman Amnon Rodan (Dr. Katie Rodan's husband) and President/CEO Diane Dietz. Drs. Rodan and Fields own most of R+F. They pocket most of the profit, just not a direct salary.

R+F press release says they achived 626.9 million revenue in 2015, and maybe a billion in 2016. You can be sure all the top execs took home MILLIONS in salaries or other compensations.

It's definitely NOT as different as the author implied.

What you can learn from the EuroFX scam that targetted Chinese victims

EuroFX is supposedly a forex trading company that started in 2012, has 13 year experience, and promised fat returns. It was shut down as a pyramid scheme in China in 2014, with possibly tens of thousands of victims that spread from the US to Phillippines, with possible amounts exceeding 2 billion USD.

What's interesting is the scope of the fraud: this involved Britons, Aussies, Singaporeans, and possibly more, with possible fake names and dozens of companies registered in UK and New Zealand and Australia.

The alleged head was a Briton by the name of David Byrne, and they promise returns of 6 -16% PER MONTH if you can invest up to 250K.  He presented himself as either CEO or Acting CEO. However, when investors caught up with him later after EuroFX's collapse, he claimed either he was only onboard for less than a year, or he's only "consultant CEO".

Whether David Byrne was guilty of collusion was NOT the issue. It's the matter of perception.


Myth: Companies registered in the UK are required to follow all UK law. 

Reality: Companies registered in the UK, but not sell to UK citizens, are NOT governed by UK law. In other words, a UK registered company can cheat and scam non-UK people, and UK law enforcement can do NOTHING about it.

That's what happened in EuroFX, were ActionFraud, the UK fraud hotline, received multiple tips about EuroFX, and even investigated, but ultimately determined that it is NOT within UK jurisdiction as it sold nothing to UK residents and citizens.

Basically, UK biz registration is worthless.

Not that you can rely on just a biz registration to determine if a business is legit any way.

But the point that companies can hire temporary CEOs is the other thing to take away... the alleged CEO is just a part of marketing.


Also see following links:

http://fortune.com/2016/08/13/eurofx-pyramid-scheme-china/

https://atozforex.com/news/why-the-west-ignores-british-ponzi-schemes/

http://eurofxvictim.weebly.com/ (Chinese/English site set up by victims to preserve evidence)

Wareable agrees: HELO LX is overpriced and should be avoided

I'll leave you to go read it on their site:

https://www.wareable.com/fitness-trackers/helo-lx-band-multi-level-marketing-9876

But the most hilarious part is a HELO rep then offered the reviewer, who just gave them a bad rating, a free sample, as if that'll change the reviewer's mind!

DSA's latest attempt to destroy direct selling: Moolenaar Amendment

Direct Selling Association is supposed to be promoting direct selling. Instead, for the past several decades, DSA has been trying to destroy direct selling by killing legislation that would have promoted retail, and promoting legislation that discouraged retail. This is actually not a surprise as DSA is really a lobbying group by the largest MLM companies like Amway, Avon, Herbalife, and so on.

In July 2017, DSA launched its latest attempt to destroy direct selling by trying to attach a rider to the current budget appropriations bill for FY18, known as the Moolenaar Amendment. It claimed that there is no Federal law that defined a pyramid scheme, and this bill would define one. The problem is, this is at best, a half-truth.

The US courts and FTC already have an existing definition of a pyramid scheme: The Koscot Test.  MLM attorney Jeff Babener called it "a twenty-year standard", back in 2001. So by now, it's a 36-year-old standard.  DSA, in its "selective blindness", pretended this standard does not exist so it can substitute a LOOSER definition instead.

DSA's previous attempt to pass a bill, deceptively titled "Anti-Pyramid Promotional Scheme Act of 2016", never made it out of committee. This time, by attaching the failed legislation to the appropriations bill, DSA hope it will sail through until various consumer organizations called them out.

But what is wrong with this piece of legislation, vs. the existing standard?

While on the surface the bill sounds rather clear, it contains several interesting bits of language designed to erode the definition over all.

But first, let us go back to the Koscot Test, and how it stood for 36 years (and counting).