As a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack from a Celtic Woman recording of “You Raise Me Up” plays in the background and various bromides appear on screen, Achieve Community prospects are encouraged in this YouTube promo to buy multiple “positions” for the cycler “program” that lost its payment processor last month. The promo guarantees a return.
“The Achieve Community” money-cycler train wreck has announced it’s back on the rails (sort of) and will relaunch today (sort of), after losing its payment processor last month. The asserted relaunch is occurring on the heels of multiple warnings from regulators about scams spreading on social media.
It’s also occurring against the backdrop of allegations in both the Zeek Rewards and TelexFree Ponzi/pyramid court cases that the operators encountered halts at various banks and payment processors, but moved to other ones to keep the massive fraud schemes going.
Both Zeek and TelexFree purported to be purveyors of a product or products. Regulators say the purported offerings were used to hide the illicit nature of the schemes. Achieve Community also purports to provide products.
Promos for Achieve Community assert that $50 for the purchase of a cycler “position” morphs into $400 in two months or so. Participants are encouraged to plow purported profits back into the system. Over time, according to this purported “repurchase strategy,” the original $50 will turn “into ANY amount you wish.”
As of the time of this PP Blog post, Achieve Community has not announced the name or names of its new payment processors. A Dec. 1 announcement attributed to co-founder Kristi Johnson suggests that Achieve Community intends immediately to start selling “positions” to participants who have debit or credit cards. When payouts to members would resume was not immediately clear.
“Payments will begin once we attach our processor, you sign up for it from your back office, and you are approved,” the Dec. 1 Blog post attributed to Johnson reads in part. “I will update you on the date to begin signing up for our payout processor.”
Naturally this has led to questions about whether Achieve Community was trying to replumb an involuntarily stalled Ponzi scheme by making it convenient for prospects to pay into the system until enough money becomes available for payouts to begin anew.
Achieve Community is said to have more than 9,000 members.
As in many network-marketing schemes, participants either are clueless about the obvious markers of fraud or pretending to be so.
News of the asserted relaunch has been greeted on social media with depictions of a fireworks display and images of champagne and wine glasses. Members of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme in 2008 celebrated purported good news in the same fashion.
As was the case with the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme two months prior to its collapse in 2012, members of Achieve Community are being fed bromides. (With Zeek, it was “If you want things in your life to change, you have to change things in your life” and more. With Achieve Community, it’s “If you do not GO after what you want, you’ll never have it” and more.)
One 5:07 promo for Achieve Community on YouTube includes virtually the entire soundtrack of a recording of “You Raise Me Up” by Celtic Woman. Various bromides appear on the screen as the hauntingly beautiful music plays. As one bromide fades away, a panel rolls onto the screen. It claims that Achieve Community “will change your life FOREVER. EVERYONE MAKES MONEY HERE. NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND. PERIOD.”
The video, with the Celtic Woman recording still playing, goes on to assert that there is “Never a moment alone” in the Achieve Community.
Another promo — this one on Facebook — shows an image of a U.S. space shuttle blasting off. “Now Anyone Can Live Their Dream!” the promo roars. “Over $2,000,000 PAID Out to Members.”
Another claims, “The Achieve Community Is On Fire.” Members of the TelexFree Ponzi- and pyramid scheme were targeted in a similar promo last year. TelexFree collapsed into a pile of Ponzi rubble in April 2014.
BULLETIN: CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, has issued a warning and suspended the trading of an HYIP “program” known as TureProfit that appears to be operating as both a macro- and a microscam while using the name of Bitcoin.
On its English website in a prompt dated Aug. 17, 2014, TureProfit purports it has “gained huge profit from BitCoin Futures market. As raward [sic], today we have added a special plan: 200% after 1 day . . . Min deposit: $500 . . . Max deposit: $500,000.”
In recent months, HYIP scammers have sought to trade on the name of Bitcoin to loosen purse strings. A number of regulators have issued warnings on scams that use a Bitcoin theme.
TureProfit, which appears to be a reincarnation of a Ponzi-board “program” that surfaced in 2011 and later collapsed, also says it gathers sums as low as $10. This and greater sums purportedly will earn “8% daily for 50 days,” with “compounding available.”
The time of the apparent resurrection may suggest scammers hoped to pick more pockets in advance of the Holiday season. Some “programs” may collect money for months and even make payments — but then suddenly go missing during the holidays. The phenomenon is known as “Back December.”
There is at least one report on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum that TureProfit was hacked in 2013. (Claimed hackings are part-and-parcel to the HYIP sphere.) By May 13, 2013, a Ponzi-board huckster noted, “looks as if this one is gone.”
But more than a year later — in August 2014 — TureProfit appears to have resurrected itself. Its website claims it is accepting Bitcoin, plus “Perfectmoney, EgoPay, Payeer . . . to ensure maximum safety of your funds. ”
Meanwhile, the “program” says, “Now we accept SolidTrustPay deposit. [T]his is good choice for US investors.”
Text on the TureProfit website bizarrely claims that when “[Liberty Reserve] failed, we had to shut down our program.”
In 2013, federal prosecutors in the United States described Liberty Reserve as a payment vessel that had helped HYIP scammers and other criminals launder $6 billion. A number of Liberty Reserve figures were charged criminally.
From the CONSOB warning (italics added):
Consob has suspended, as a precautionary measure and for a period of 90 days, the offering to the public resident in Italy of the investment programme named “Tureprofit” active via the website www.tureprofit.com (Resolution no. 19070 of 27 November 2014).
The offer is also intended for the public residing in Italy. Despite being prepared in English, the website where subscriptions are collected also features a function to automatically translate the content into Italian. It should also be noted that there is no specific disclaimer stating that the content refers only to residents of countries other than Italy.
The “Tureprofit” offer of financial products has the following characteristics: (a) for the purpose of subscription, a minimum payment of 10 US dollars is required; (b) in exchange for this payment, it promises a daily return, for 50 days, of 8 percent; (c) the client has no independent management. It would therefore appear to satisfy the characteristics of a financial investment, considering the simultaneous presence of: (i) an investment of capital; (ii) an expectation of a return of a financial nature; (iii) the assumption of a risk associated with the investment of capital.
However, in relation to the offer programme, there has been (a) no prior communication to Consob, and (b) no transmission of a prospectus intended for publication. Therefore, there is a well-grounded suspicion that this is an offer to the public of financial products carried out in breach of Art. 94, Section 1 of the Consolidated Law on Finance. As the offer is still underway, the Commission has adopted the precautionary measure of declaring a suspension in accordance with Art. 99, subsection 1, letter b) of said Decree.
(in “Consob Informa” no. 46/2014 – 1 December 2014)
Visit the CONSOB website. (As of today, Dec. 1, 2014, a brief on the TureProfit suspension action appears near the top of the CONSOB site, under the “Warnings” section.)
ABAJournal.com, the website of the prestigious flagship magazine of the American Bar Association, has named PonziTracker.com to the “Blawg 100” for a second time.
PonziTracker.com is published by attorney Jordan Maglich.
“Ponzitracker is honored to be included in the Blawg 100,” Maglich says on the Blog.
The Top 100 selection was made from a list of more than 4,000 eligible publications.
Maglich, who also writes for Forbes, is an attorney at Wiand Guerra King PL in Tampa, Fla. His practice includes complex commercial litigation, receiverships, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act litigation, and regulatory matters, with a focus on securities and financial services litigation.
Don’t get fleeced by HYIP scammers and commission-based promoters who push such fraud schemes on the Internet, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) says in a new warning.
Have you ever seen an ad on the Internet or a posting on a social media site promising too-good-to-be-true rates of return in short periods of time? Then you may have encountered an advertisement for a high-yield investment program, sometimes referred to as an HYIP.
HYIPs are Ponzi schemes sold by unlicensed individuals. In the past, con artists relied on word of mouth to lure investors into these investments. Now they rely on the Internet and social media buzz to quickly popularize their schemes before the fraud is discovered.
NASAA’s membership consists of “67 state, provincial, and territorial securities administrators in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, and Mexico,” the group says.
On Nov. 12, 2014, the SEC charged an HYIP known as “Profits Paradise” that allegedly was operating from India while duping people into believing it was operating from the United States.
The first Profits Paradise “plan purportedly yielded daily interest of 1.5 percent on investments of $10 to $749,” the SEC said. “The second plan purportedly yielded 1.75 percent on investments of $750 to $3,499. And the third plan purportedly yielded 2 percent on investments of $3,500 and above. Postings on Profit Paradise’s Facebook page promised investors they could ‘Enjoy Hassle Free Income’ and advertised a ‘5% Referral Commission.’”
NASAA’s HYIP warning notes that some HYIP scammers are switching to cryptocurrencies. With many HYIPs already operating in an environment of secrecy, ones that use payment vessels such as Bitcoin may intensify risk to investors.
Some common concerns and issues you should consider before investing in any product containing virtual currency include:
Virtual currency is subject to minimal regulation,susceptible to cyber-attacks and there may be no recourse should the virtual currency disappear.
Virtual currency accounts are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures bank deposits up to $250,000.
Investments tied to virtual currency may be unsuitable for most investors due to their volatility.
Investors in virtual currency will be highly reliant upon unregulated companies that may lack appropriate internal controls and may be more susceptible to fraud and theft than regulated financial institutions.
Investors will have to rely upon the strength of their own computer security systems, as well as security systems provided by third parties, to protect their e-Wallets from theft.
“6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the Ad Click Xpress pages in order to collect information for someone else.” — From the AdClickXpress Terms of Service, Nov. 29, 2014
The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.
In short, ACX ropes “customers” into an international financial conspiracy theoretically designed to be offshore everywhere. But deliberately taunting government investigators in its Terms of Service (see breakout quote above from the Terms) appears only to have been a first act. The “program” now appears to be taunting its own members and prospects.
From a Sept. 10, 2014, post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, quoting from the taunt (italics/bolding added):
Note: if members are found to have posted negative information about ACX, even if it is absolutely true, their account could be penalized significantly. ACX Management will be the sole determinant as to how much damage the member has caused other ACX Members.
Like the bizarre and incongruous AdViewGlobal scam before it, ACX fancies itself a “private association.” But even if it were one of those — and even if in theory it could hamstring government investigators and reporters with a vomitous word salad — it is a “private association” that threatens its own members in ways the Mafia wouldn’t consider.
So, at least by Sept. 10, ACX began serving up BannersBroker-like word-sewage. It’s all designed to confuse and to obfuscate, of course.
By the Terms alone, ACX makes co-conspirators of its members. And after this artifice is carried out, it divines a construction by which it will penalize “significantly” and unilaterally calculate damages purportedly caused by those same members who’d dare post “negative information . . . even if it’s absolutely true.”
Separately, there are unconfirmed reports on MoneyMakerGroup that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JPB and the de facto inspiration behind the follow-up scams, has died. Mann, a former pitchmen for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, once directed traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, the now-convicted Alaska “sovereign citizen” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.
BULLETIN: (6th Update 9:51 a.m. ET U.S.A.) A gunman who reportedly targeted the headquarters of the Austin Police Department and other government buildings in an overnight attack in Texas has been shot dead.
Austin Assistant Chief Raul Munguia has told reporters that the suspect appears to have used a vehicle that contained an improvised explosive device. Because the suspect was wearing a vest of some sort, there is concern that it could be armed, too.
A bomb squad was dispatched.
Early reports suggest the other buildings included the federal courthouse in downtown Austin and Mexico’s consulate.
Austin is the capital of Texas. Police and first responders were targeted in an attack last week near Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.
Picture of four bullet holes that shattered the glass of the guard shack on the back side of the federal courthouse pic.twitter.com/bFVnUgXRCe — Erin Cargile (@erincargile) November 28, 2014
A media briefing will be at 9 a.m. re: this mornings shooting @ the Waller Creek Bldg. located at 10th and the west frontage of IH-35.
From NBC News, quoting a person who observed part of the incident (italics added):
“[The shooter] was in full gear so he didn’t seem like a civilian, but there was no writing on any of the equipment,” the restaurant server said. “It seemed like he was wearing a bullet-proof vest and he was wearing a helmet with a clear visor over his face.”
Attorney General Lawrence Wasden at an Idaho event last year. Source: website of the attorney general.
The successful felony prosecutions under federal law of two Connecticut women in a cash-gifting scam apparently hasn’t registered in Idaho.
Now, the state’s attorney general, citing the Connecticut prosecutions that led to lengthy prison sentences, is taking action. And he’s not mincing words.
“Taking part in an unlawful pyramid scheme violates the Idaho Consumer Protection Act and is a felony under the state’s criminal code,” Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said. “Make no mistake – taking part in these schemes is illegal. Anyone who has received money from participating must pay it back. Failure to do so may result in civil or criminal enforcement action.”
Idaho investigators have received two recent reports of illegal gifting pyramids operating in the state, Wasden’s office said. Sums of $5,000 are being solicited. Reports identified the schemes as a “Women’s Wisdom Circle.”
One has “a formal dinner theme, the other a gardening theme,” Idaho prosecutors said.
In one Women’s Wisdom Circle reportedly operating in Ammon, participants are being asked to pay a $5,000 entry fee. By recruiting others, participants can then advance up the pyramid through levels named after the courses of a formal dinner: appetizer, soup/salad, entrée and dessert. Reports investigated by the Consumer Protection Division indicate those at the top of the pyramid have received payments of up to $40,000.
The gardening theme gifting circle operating near Preston makes “soil” the entry position, while “harvester” rests at the top of the pyramid.
The schemes are promoted as gifting programs intended to empower women and claim to adhere to IRS gifting rules. Women are encouraged to keep their involvement secret and are required to sign a statement that the money they pay is a gift, with nothing expected in return.
The statements are false and do not make participation legal, regardless of what potential recruits are told, Wasden said.
“Participants should stop immediately,” Wasden warned. “Unlawful pyramid schemes collapse, hurt people financially and are a crime in Idaho.”
British police nationwide are calling “upon communities to help tackle terrorism” in the wake of the arrests and subsequent convictions of two brothers accused of attending a terrorist training camp in Syria and returning to the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan Police Service said today.
Mohommod Hassin Nawaz, 31, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Younger brother Hamza Nawaz, 23, was sentenced to three years. The brothers, the service said, were stopped at Dover port in Southeast England at 3 a.m. on Sept. 16, 2013, after traveling on a ferry from Calais in Northern France.
A search of their silver Peugeot, the service said, resulted in the discovery of :
Five rounds of 7.62mm ammunition “suitable for the use in a range of rifles and assault rifles.”
Numerous mobile phones and a SIM card, containing “images, video clips and text messages relating training camps.”
A “balaclava and heavy duty clothing,” including boots covered in dust.
A total of £2,400 in cash.
Travel documents identifying their movements.
“Officers found communications on their phones indicating that they had attended a terror training camp located in the Latakia province of Syria,” the service said. “Detectives believe that the brothers had cultivated an extremist mindset over a period of months prior to their travel.”
The Internet is being used to poison thinking, the service said.
“As more vulnerable people are being brainwashed through social media, police call for parents, carers, friends and colleagues to be alert to the signs of extremism,” the service said.
Said Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy, national policing lead for the Prevent Programme: “The police cannot be in every mosque, college or other community venue monitoring what is discussed and the doctrines which are promoted. Nor would we want Britain to be such a society.
“We need parents, schools, partners, friends and colleagues to be aware of the signs that someone is being influenced by extremist messages and have the confidence to report any concerns to the police,” he continued. “Look out for notable changes in behaviour and mood; those vulnerable may begin to express extreme political or radical views, or appear increasingly sympathetic to terrorist acts; their appearance may change along with the friends that they spend time with or they may start to spend excessive time on their own or on the internet.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Zeek Rewards receiver Kenneth D. Bell has issued the statement reproduced below. It is dated Nov. 25, 2014. Source: Zeek Rewards Receivership Website.
** ________________________________ **
ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE RECEIVER – November 25, 2014
Today, new features were added to the claim status portal in response to issues that have arisen in the distribution process. The claim status portal can be accessed by following: https://cert.gardencitygroup.com/zrwdet/fs/home. These updates allow for a claimant who is eligible to receive a distribution to be able to check the status of that distribution by logging on to the claim status portal. In addition to claim status, that portal will now provide those affiliates who are eligible to receive a distribution with: the date on which his/her distribution check was issued; the amount of the distribution check; whether the distribution check has been cashed; and whether the distribution check was returned to us as undeliverable. Second, if your check was returned to us, lost, destroyed, or your check was issued in the wrong name (for example, if you inadvertently provided your Zeek username instead of your real name when you provided your payment information), you will now be able to request a new check be issued to you in the proper name. We hope that these updates will address many of the issues you have been asking us about.
With these improvements to the claims status portal we will no longer respond to emails and calls that request the status of a claim that can otherwise be answered by logging into the claim portal and checking on the status of your claim. We have been spending a considerable amount of receivership assets responding to affiliate claimants’ inquiries about the status of their claim, all of which can now be answered through self-help. The savings generated by this automated system will allow us to make larger distributions to all affiliate claimants holding allowed claims.
Among the inquiries to which we will no longer be responding are requests from affiliates who registered on the claims portal but did not complete and finally submit a claim. The claims system was continuously operational and was tested and verified as accurate during the claims period and afterward. If review of your claim status shows that you did not finally submit a claim through the claim portal by the Court ordered deadline of September 5, 2013, I have no authority to accept or permit you to file a claim thereafter, including now. I regret that anyone who could have validly submitted a claim failed to do so.
If you hold a claim eligible for a distribution, but were not mailed a check on September 30, 2014, I encourage you to login to the claims status portal and accept the letter of determination you were issued (or have any objection you raised to the claim determination resolved) and submit the required Release and OFAC certification so that we may distribute money to you. If you take these steps, you will be mailed a first interim partial distribution at the end of January 2015.
By the close of business on December 1, 2014, we will have issued Letters of Determination to all affiliate claimants who timely filed claims.
Finally, we continue to receive many inquiries about tax withholdings from distribution checks. We are trying very hard to get reliable guidance from the Internal Revenue Service. I do not want to withhold taxes from distribution checks, but unless and until I receive assurance that the IRS agrees with me, withholdings will be made. We cannot expose the receivership, and the assets which we have and from which we will make distributions to victims, to potential penalties and fines by the IRS.
From a letter by Sen. Al Franken to Uber. Franken, a Democrat, is a member of the powerful Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He also is chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.
We’ll begin by pointing out that Uber, the popular ride-sharing company and darling of venture capitalists, is not an MLM firm. But it sure is acting like one, even briefly vomiting one of MLM’s most familiar and reflexive responses to critics: HatersGonnaHate.
Can MLM enterprises and MLMers in general learn from Uber’s bizarre missteps?
You see, both Uber and MLM have a common problem: a certain internal recklessness coupled with a tin ear for PR, one that serves up one spectacular gaffe after another. Uber’s latest self-inflicted wound now has the attention of Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat. Franken wants to know why “Uber’s Senior Vice-President of Business Emil Michael recently made statements suggesting that Uber might mine private information to target a journalist who had criticized the company.”
A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.
Put another way: make the lady sweat that some skeleton might surface and lead to her demise should she dare continue to write pieces Uber found unflattering.
One Uber executive, BuzzFeed reported, planted the seed that Uber could prove “a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.”
The journalist is Sarah Lacy, the editor-in-chief at PandoDaily and a Mom. Here we’ll mention that, in addition to the Uber thuggishness, she’s also had to deal with the sidebar contention that Pando just might be funded by the CIA.
As a journalist who has been accused by MLMers of being on the CIA payroll and told by MLMers that my supposed secrets dealing with my supposed homosexuality and supposed porn addiction will be outed even as “sovereign citizens” threaten me with $500,000 fines for alleged trademark infringement, it will come as no surprise to PP Blog readers that I’m more than a little sympathetic to reporters who encounter thugs.
This sympathy extends whether the thugs are in the Ivory Tower or operating from the sewers.
The BuzzFeed Uber revelation set off a media firestorm now in its fourth day, putting Uber’s name in the papers for all the wrong reasons. Now, at least one reporter has come forward to claim that Uber tracked her without her permission as she rode in a Uber car. The device Uber uses to perform this tracking is known as “God View.”
In September, venture capitalist Peter Sims wrote that he’d been tracked by Uber without his permission. Sims says he was in a Uber car in New York City and that Uberites in Chicago were monitoring his movements. What this means, in essence, is that Uber was using him as a stage prop without his knowledge and consent from halfway across the country while also invading his privacy.
This reminds me of two crackpot MLM schemes making the rounds in 2010. These “programs” were known as NarcThatCar and Data Network Affiliates. Both schemes bizarrely reimagined mass invasions of privacy as exciting new products — and then wrapped pyramid schemes around their creations for good measure.
The schemes worked approximately like this: Armies of MLMers would hit neighborhoods across the land and write down the license-plate numbers of cars parked on streets and the addresses at which they were parked. They’d also hit the parking lots of grocery stores, big-box retailers, restaurant chains, pharmacies, doctors’ offices, bookstores, libraries, theaters, video-rental companies and universities.
All of this information would be entered in a database, purportedly to assist the AMBER Alert system of locating abducted children. AMBER Alert purportedly would get the data for free, but clientele purportedly including banks and companies in the business of repossessing cars during the height of the recession would pay for it.
MLM recruits were told to try not to attract too much attention while writing down all these plate numbers. They also were falsely told they were helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security track terrorists.
Yes. MLM went in the spy business, using the pretext that it was one’s patriotic duty to monitor license plates and that enormous profits would flow from neighbors keeping track of automobiles in their neighborhoods. As the story was told, the database could tell the police what cars were parked at a fixed address at the time a child was snatched. This information then could be compared to the next sighting of the tag as entered in the database from a different fixed address, thus purportedly providing clues as to where the kidnapped child was being held.
If anyone had the temerity to raise a stink or even make a polite inquiry about why a stranger was recording their plate number in a parking lot, the recorders were trained to respond that no one had anything to fear if they hadn’t done anything wrong.
Both Narc and DNA were filled with such Orwellian outrageousness (and were such obvious pyramid schemes) that reporters began to hound both “programs.” The Better Business Bureau was subjected to bizarre attacks from the MLM sphere for raising questions about the “programs,” and some MLMers got the idea that the reporters, rather than the companies pulling off obvious scams, should be investigated.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have imagined greater allies than the MLM Stepfordians.
By 2012, MLMer and Zeek Rewards Ponzi-scheme figure Robert Craddock got the bright idea of putting himself in the opposition-research business — the opposition being reporters who wrote anything bad about Zeek. One of his targets was Zeek critic K. Chang, who briefly lost control over his HubPages site because Craddock had filed a complaint alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement and libel.
K. Chang eventually prevailed, but not without experiencing downtime while the Zeek scheme was still gathering cash. The SEC eventually shut down Zeek, alleging that it was operating a fraud that had gathered $850 million.
Still sensing there was money to be made in the MLM cottage business of harassing reporters or soliciting dirt on them, Craddock eventually established a website known as “InternetClowns” that purportedly would serve all MLM firms. The supposed “clowns” included the PP Blog and BehindMLM.com, two sites that report on MLM frauds.
At the beginning of this column I noted that perhaps MLM could learn something from the experience of Uber in the subject area of tracking reporters and soliciting dirt on them. It strikes me now that maybe it should be the other way around: that Uber could learn from MLM.
One of the things Uber could learn is not to do anything MLMish if it wants to maintain its standing as a venture-capital darling.
By MLMish, we mean something crazy and outlandish such as tracking reporters, bringing in opposition-research teams to menace them and telling a group of people in the Second City that you’re using your “God Machine” to spy on a venture capitalist in the Big Apple.
And perhaps Uber also might want to avoid the most recent practice associated with “defenders” of outrageous MLM “programs” and HYIP schemes.
This would be the practice of trying to smear critics by using online forums to plant false stories about critics’ ties to Islamic terrorist groups and otherwise attacking human beings based on their Muslim faith.
Uber can read all about that one on RealScam.com, a site that concerns itself with international mass-marketing fraud. RealScam.com currently is being hectored by a person known as “Happy Customer” who is making outrageous claims against critics, filing bogus reports at RipoffReport and trying to keyword stuff the forum with words such as “Islamic Forum” and “haven for Islamic Terrorists !”
Happy Customer’s mind appears to be telling him (used presumptively) that, if only he can use the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” enough times — while mixing in words such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” — the eavesdropping and text-reading National Security Agency might just buzz by and turn off RealScam’s server.
Study the strange MLM circus, Uber. What you’ll learn should be more than enough to help make most unwanted headlines go away.
