Throw a pebble at your circle of friends and family and you're bound to hit someone who is or was caught up in these pyramid schemes. The friend of a friend who approached me 11 years ago asking how id love to be my own boss and financially independent and retired by 30 is still working a 9-5 to make ends meet while running his shop.com/herbalife/primerica/amway/scentsy scam on facebook. Does anyone know anyone caught up in this garbage?


https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55145586
Charlotte could see why she might be considered a good fit for the role. She was a vegan, she'd just graduated and was looking for work.

She didn't take much convincing to pay the £30 sign-up fee and buy £200 worth of products to get her started.

With money invested, Charlotte was keen to learn more about the makeup, and be trained on how to sell it.

But she says she lost £800 in four months.

Both Faye and Charlotte were told to attend a training conference. When they arrived, it wasn't what they expected.

"The best way I could describe that day is a cult meeting," Charlotte tells Newsbeat.

She remembers it as a series of speakers giving talks, with a lot of "hype and motivational phrases".

"They didn't have anything to do with the products. They were about how to cold-message people and how to recruit."

Charlotte says at one point everyone was told to get up and do a Mexican wave. Another time they were told to stand up and shout: "I'm going to earn a white Mercedes," she says.

"All the positive affirmations and manifestation they encourage is a way to put the blame on you," she tells us.

"If you start to notice you're not making any money, they say it's your fault. They say you're putting those thoughts in to the universe and the universe gives you back what you're thinking.

"It distracts people from the fact that they're losing hundreds of pounds."

Back when I was in high school, the scam was Vector Knives Marketing.

They would offer "$13/hr" which was a lot for a 16 year old.

But it was just a pyramid scheme for you to buy their knives and attempt to make money by trying to sell those knives to other people door-to-door.

Word of mouth is the best way to stop these losers. Market churn will take care of them once they stop making money.

I literally got the same offer to sell knives when I was a teenager, some small site in central Jersey.

This post was edited by obisent on Feb 27 2021 08:16am

I remember those damn knives, a family friend was demonstrating the garbage knives in the living room almost 20 years ago

Thats not a pyramid scheme lol. Pyramid scheme is where you get paid to recruit.



I still have my cutco knives and everybody I sold them to 10 years ago still has them and says theyre still the best knives they own.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 27 2021 09:23am

I did Quixtar for about 45 minutes, because it took that long to get the fuckers out of my house.

When you're so good at being a scam artist that you scam yourself and enjoy it.

Meh. I have a Cutco chef knife and it's the best knife I own too. Not that its competition is anything above big box store complete knife set kind of stuff.

One of the things I plan on getting for the kitchen at the new house, once we get settled and sell this place, is a set of Shun knives.

I went to an ACN meeting 10 years ago because someone invited me for a "great job opportunity." It felt like a cult... the orator was showing a PowerPoint presentation of how 9-5's are horrendous and it's better to be independent then he started talking about how much potentially you can earn from the products, etc. Every time he said business buzzwords, the cult startied clapping and there were even a couple of standing ovations especially at the end - it was so rehearsed and off-putting. After the meeting, the guy who invited me and his comrades begged me to pay the registration fee of $500 and assured me they he will help me get set up, find contacts, etc. The desperation on their faces told me all I needed to know... suffice to say he avoided me ever since that night.