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  • John Oliver calls MLM industry a ‘pyramid scheme’

    John Oliver calls MLM industry a ‘pyramid scheme’

    The Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on the HBO channel aired an episode on November 06,2016 demonstrating how direct selling or MLM companies use unethical practices to make money.

    John Oliver mocking the  MLM industry  said that they generally have two things in common- “first, you don’t see them on store shelves, you buy them from distributors like friends , family , co-workers and secondly they are always looking for more distributors to join them. And they have pretty attractive message” of how it helps you become your own boss, pay your own bills and flexi working hours.

    Oliver said that though the MLM companies may present their business as a great opportunity to make a lot of money, however, the chances of success are very remote. He called it a pyramid scheme where only a few people at the top make a huge amount of money.

    The main focus of the episode revolved around the point that people who join the MLMs make money from recruiting more distributors rather than from the actual sale of products to the customers outside their distributors.

    He however also acknowledged the fact that the industry has done around $36.12 Billion business collectively in the US in the year 2015.

    Multilevel Marketing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

    The episode focused on a dozen of MLM companies like Vemma, Youngevity, Kyani and mostly Herbalife. Almost half the episode talked about Herbalife and the claims made by its distributors for which the company had got into trouble recently with the FTC. Herbalife competes with Amway in the vitamin and supplement line of products. Earlier this year, Federal Trade Commission had ordered Herbalife to pay $200 million to compensate distributors who lost money. The FTC also required them to some make major changes in its sales and distribution practices.

    Amway expressed its disappointment at the misrepresentation of the direct selling industry which has given an opportunity to many people across the world.

    In 1979 Amway was the first Direct Selling / MLM company to be investigated. The federal agency ruled out the allegation of illegal pyramid scheme but said that it was certainly guilty of price fixing and overstating earn potential.

    However, it was also interesting to see that Oliver did not mention Amway and the examples given were mostly that from Herbalife. Amway a giant of the Direct Selling or MLM industry, headquartered  at Ada, collects more than a quarter of the industry’s $36 billion in annual revenue.  It was indeed very interesting to note that not one example of misrepresentation by Amway was mentioned in the episode. One might wonder if the episode was indeed an attempt to show the real picture of the MLM industry or to showcase the unethical conducts and misrepresentation by one MLM company.

    The Direct Sales Association published a statement criticizing the show on its Facebook page. They said  “As the voice of direct selling in the U.S., we are proud to represent a vibrant industry of the more than 20 million Americans who are involved in direct sales to do things like supplement their income or balance work with family. We are disappointed by Mr. Oliver’s mischaracterization of our industry and its value to many, including veterans, stay-at-home moms, caregivers and early retirees, among others.”

    The DSA also mentioned that “most direct sellers offer protections and guarantees to their customers and salespeople, many of which exceed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations, as well as federal and state law. In addition, members of DSA adhere to a set of standards as part of our Code of Ethics, which includes requirements that member companies buy back unused inventory at no less than 90% of the original purchase price.” DSA urged the public to take the time to learn the facts on their  website at www.dsa.org/facts.”

    The MLM episode on the YouTube video has been watched more than 5 million times so far.

  • THE DIRECT SELLING ASSOCIATION ON PYRAMID SCHEMES: TRUTH AND TRUTHINESS

    THE DIRECT SELLING ASSOCIATION ON PYRAMID SCHEMES: TRUTH AND TRUTHINESS

    Dr Vander Nat and Dr Keep set the record straight & discuss how recent DSA report mainly appeals to truthiness, takes novel stand on key diagnostic for a pyramid scheme and runs contrary to recent case law

    This is a guest blog by Peter Vander Nat, Ph D, and William Keep, Ph D. Dr Vander Nat is a former senior economist with the FTC who has testified in numerous federal pyramid scheme cases. Dr Keep is the Dean of the School of Business at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) and an expert on pyramid schemes. Together Drs Vander Nat and Keep authored two seminal works analyzing the MLM industry.

    Public statements presented as true, though without supporting logic or evidence, if repeated frequently and with enough gravitas may eventually be accepted as true. To capture this type of phenomenon, a new word has been added to our lexicon, “truthiness.” Truthiness does not necessarily indicate a false statement, though a false statement authoritatively asserted as though it were true does qualify.

    Below we test our understanding of truthiness with regard to a recent report commissioned by the Direct Selling Association (DSA) and other assorted DSA public statements. Curiously, the authors of the DSA report are antitrust experts, who have neither published any scholarly works concerning multilevel marketing companies (MLMs), nor acted as pyramid scheme experts in a court of law. Perhaps it is due to this lack of expertise and experience that their report mainly appeals to truthiness.

    As for truth, it is certainly true that much effort, time and many words went into criticizing a paper* that we wrote thirteen years ago. But it must be pointed out at the start that the model we developed as a scholarly work has never been used in a court of law to determine whether or not a company is operating a pyramid scheme, and it was never proposed that it could function in that way. This is so because each pyramid case presents a unique set of available data, and the analysis in each case must address how the company functions in practice. Unfortunately, the authors of the DSA report did not appreciate these relevant points. If they had, their report could have been cut in half, and perhaps more.

    The DSA report grants at the start that we are recognized experts in the field of distinguishing a legitimate business enterprise from a pyramid scheme. But it omits the recognition that, in the 15 pyramid scheme cases in which Dr. Vander Nat was appointed the government’s expert – each time submitting an economic analysis to the court — no court has ever rejected his conclusion that the organization is/was a pyramid scheme. That is to say, the vast majority of arguments made in the DSA report are old news, having been considered and either rejected or ignored in numerous courts of law.

    Unencumbered by this precedent, the DSA report takes a novel stand and boldly declares (literally puts in bold), “[t]he key diagnostic for a pyramid scheme is whether the transactions defining the commercial enterprise yield incremental value to society,” — a claim that is firmly rejected by eminent scholarship in law and economics (see Posner below). Here is a respectful word of advice to DSA members: although you might like what this report has to say, if ever an MLM company is in court defending itself against pyramid scheme allegations, waxing poetic about the firm’s value to society won’t help; far better to focus on retail sales.

    We further highlight that the 2014 BurnLounge decision, which is used as the basis for the DSA’s critique of our work, does not invalidate our emphasis on retail sales, whether in the 2002 paper or in specific court testimony (below). By presenting a few selective portions of the BurnLounge ruling and ignoring the fully articulated basis for the ruling that BurnLounge was a pyramid scheme, the DSA report dismisses our emphasis on retail sales as “a premise that cannot be sustained.” Actually, we show the opposite. Not only can it be sustained, an emphasis on retail sales is being sustained by the appellate decision itself (2014) and in a recent federal court injunction against Vemma (2015).

    A Sampling of Truthiness in the DSA Report and Public DSA Statements
     
    As to the report’s purported “key diagnostic:”
     
    1. This assertion (quoted earlier), conveying a concomitant need for cost/benefit analysis regarding a pyramid scheme, is a striking example of ignorance for known principles in economics and law. A pyramid scheme is inherently fraudulent (every court has said so), and is properly analyzed under the established maxim that deception/fraud carries no social benefit. As explained by Judge Posner in his Economic Analysis of Law (2nd ed. P.81), “The question of affirmative misrepresentations in consumer transactions is straightforward: the costs of making and of unmasking the misrepresentation represent a deadweight social loss,” and later continues with “Misrepresentation involves costs to both sellers and buyers that yield no social gain.”
    2. The FTC follows the same principle and never offers extrinsic evidence by way of cost/benefit analysis in prosecuting deception. Ironically, based on the DSA report, the FTC must be missing the “key diagnostic for a pyramid scheme.”
    3. Instead, the agency affirms (FTC Policy Statement on Deception; 1983) that extrinsic evidence in cases of deception “can consist of expert opinion, consumer testimony (particularly in cases involving oral representations), copy tests, surveys, or any other reliable evidence of consumer interpretation.”
     
    In sympathy with the DSA report, Mr. Mariano, President of the DSA declared: “The legal analysis should be: is the product being used by real consumers?” Whether the consumer is a distributor is immaterial, he says.
     
    1. What about the following? Courts have ruled that whether product purchasers are primarily business participants versus consumers is an important part of pyramid determination, with numerous courts finding MLM companies to be pyramid schemes with negligible sales beyond what their distributor-recruits purchase, and with documented harm to tens of thousands of victims. MLM companies continue to face pyramid scheme charges.
     
    “Even if one were to accept the faulty premise that case law trumps economics when it comes to performing economic analysis, recent developments have… Continue Reading…