EDITORIAL: Want To Build Your U.S. TelexFree Downline While An Active Pyramid-Scheme Investigation Is Under Way In Brazil? Ignore Or Downplay The Probe And Tell A ‘Carlos Danger’ Joke

Scott Miller goes for a “Carlos Danger” laugh line at a TelexFree event in California.

EDITOR’S NOTE: TelexFree has two executives named Carlos — Carlos N. Wanzeler, and Carlos Costa. Neither of them is “Carlos Danger.”

TelexFree, an MLM “opportunity,” has been under investigation in multiple states in Brazil since at least late June. There have been reports of death threats against a judge and a prosecutor — and there have been reports of assaults against journalists covering the alleged scam in Brazil.

None of this appears to have motivated TelexFree to cancel/postpone a California MLM rah-rah session in late July.

Scott Miller, according to a video playing on YouTube, was one of the featured TelexFree speakers at the Newport Beach event. Members of his group claim in videos that, if one sends $15,125 to TelexFree to purchase a “contract,” one will emerge with guaranteed earnings of at least $1,100 a week for a year. The math of the claim is basically this: $1,100 a week for 52 weeks equals $57,200. Subtract the original outlay of $15,125, and emerge $42,075 on the plus side.

Put another way, plunk down a little more than $15,000 and watch it virtually triple or quadruple in a year. Would Bernard Madoff have dared to be so bold?

The plain answer is no. Madoff roped in his Ponzi victims with suggestions of vastly lower annual returns.

But all of this TelexFree tripling or quadrupling of money is possible — to hear the firm’s cheerleaders tell it on YouTube — if recruits carry out a simple task: place an ad for the “opportunity” at free classified sites online. And you can make more in pure dollar terms by sending more, the cheerleaders say.

If you find it strange that TelexFree is continuing to conduct business in the United States against the backdrop of alleged threats against judicial officers in Brazil even as some TelexFree promoters try to drive business to the firm by videotaping a statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, you may find it stranger yet that New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s name has made its way into a TelexFree sales pitch.

Nothing suggests that confessed sexting aficionado and former Congressman Weiner has anything whatsoever to do with TelexFree. But his in-the-news name apparently was one too rich for Miller to ignore from the stage in Newport Beach.

Miller told the assembled TelexFree masses in California that 75 percent of the people in MLM are women.

“Even Anthony Weiner — ‘Carlos Danger’ — can meet someone in this industy,” Miller cracked. Carlos Danger reportedly was an online name name used by Weiner.

MLM and/or affiliate schemes have been known to trade on the names of famous politicians of both major American political parties, occasionally even planting the seed that the famous politicians even had endorsed the “opportunity.” The $119 million AdSurfDaily MLM Ponzi scam traded on the names of (Republican) President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, for example. The Mantria Ponzi scheme ($54.5 million) traded on the name of former President Bill Clinton, with one of the pitchmen encouraging prospects to join the [Donald] Trump network after the 2009 collapse of Mantria. Clinton is a Democrat who continues to be a major figure on the world stage after an affair with an intern nearly toppled his Presidency; Trump is a billionaire, an occasional MLM cheerleader and an often-rumored GOP Presidential candidate who appears to enjoy trying to tweak President Obama, a Democrat, by pandering to the “Birther” conspiracy-theory vote.

In 2010, an affiliate of the MPB Today MLM “program” tried to drive traffic to the now-shuttered “opportunity” whose operator is jailed by positioning Obama and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as Nazis, with Obama’s family being positioned as welfare recipients eager to eat dog food.

With each passing day, MLM seems to be creating bigger and bigger PR disasters for itself.  We’re left wondering: What is funnier? The joke about Anthony Weiner or the fact it was told by an MLMer whose group apparently believes that sending an entire year’s salary for many Americans to TelexFree during an active investigation will cause the investment to mushroom while Bernard Madoff is knocking another year off his 150-year sentence?

In any event, the apparent message in some U.S. MLM circles today is that you can build a downline in TelexFree even during an offshore pyramid probe by ignoring or downplaying the investigations and deflecting the attention of the audience further by trotting out your best “Carlos Danger” lines.

And you can triple or quadruple your money while doing so, of course.