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False Profits: Seeking Financial and Spiritual Deliverance in Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Schemes
In the classic traditions of whistle-blowing and muckraking, False Profits unflinchingly reveals the facts and realities of pyramid frauds and multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes, also called network marketing or direct selling, that are sweeping America and much of the rest of the world.
The frauds that False Profits exposes and examines are not plotted in Wall Street boardrooms. They are rampant on Main Street, promoted in neighborhoods, hawked at churches, foisted on family and pitched in break rooms at work. The pushers are trusted friends and colleagues.
To reveal these home-based scams, False Profits guides readers in a self-examination of treasured ideals and beliefs that the schemes manipulate and claim to espouse. It challenges readers to look at core values regarding work, success and personal relationships, which the schemes commercialize and exploit.
Though 99% of people who invest in them suffer losses in money, time and relationships – sometimes bankruptcy and divorce – pyramid scams operate behind a veil of silence. Fear, shame and the loyalty of social networks prevent most people from speaking out. False Profits breaks the silence.
Co-author Robert L. FitzPatrick is the nation’s foremost expert on pyramid sales scams, serving as expert in more pyramid court cases and prosecutions than any other private citizen in America. He has advised foreign governments on fraud regulation and been featured as an expert in numerous media investigations of pyramid schemes, including the Wall Street Journal, CBS 60 Minutes, New York Times, and the BBC. In 2000, he co-founded Pyramid Scheme Alert, the first consumer organization to expose and combat pyramid schemes.
First published in the late 90s, the factual analysis and probing questions in False Profits are all the more relevant today. Pyramid schemes have grown in size, sophistication and boldness. Millions of people pour hopes and dreams into the schemes, depicted by the promoters as the greatest business in the world. As foreclosures and unemployment ravage the middle class, MLM recruiters unscrupulously tout their schemes as safe havens from Recession and the last chance for the average guy.
Where can we turn to evaluate these seemingly irresistible solicitations? False Profits gives the tools for seeing through them and the insights for understanding our own vulnerability.
The frauds that False Profits exposes and examines are not plotted in Wall Street boardrooms. They are rampant on Main Street, promoted in neighborhoods, hawked at churches, foisted on family and pitched in break rooms at work. The pushers are trusted friends and colleagues.
To reveal these home-based scams, False Profits guides readers in a self-examination of treasured ideals and beliefs that the schemes manipulate and claim to espouse. It challenges readers to look at core values regarding work, success and personal relationships, which the schemes commercialize and exploit.
Though 99% of people who invest in them suffer losses in money, time and relationships – sometimes bankruptcy and divorce – pyramid scams operate behind a veil of silence. Fear, shame and the loyalty of social networks prevent most people from speaking out. False Profits breaks the silence.
Co-author Robert L. FitzPatrick is the nation’s foremost expert on pyramid sales scams, serving as expert in more pyramid court cases and prosecutions than any other private citizen in America. He has advised foreign governments on fraud regulation and been featured as an expert in numerous media investigations of pyramid schemes, including the Wall Street Journal, CBS 60 Minutes, New York Times, and the BBC. In 2000, he co-founded Pyramid Scheme Alert, the first consumer organization to expose and combat pyramid schemes.
First published in the late 90s, the factual analysis and probing questions in False Profits are all the more relevant today. Pyramid schemes have grown in size, sophistication and boldness. Millions of people pour hopes and dreams into the schemes, depicted by the promoters as the greatest business in the world. As foreclosures and unemployment ravage the middle class, MLM recruiters unscrupulously tout their schemes as safe havens from Recession and the last chance for the average guy.
Where can we turn to evaluate these seemingly irresistible solicitations? False Profits gives the tools for seeing through them and the insights for understanding our own vulnerability.
227 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 1997
26 people are currently reading
353 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 5, 2016
I just finished this very enlightening book about the multi-level-marketing and pyramid scheme sub-culture. Basically, it's an expose of this neighborhood of get-rich-quick cults complete with a single page take-down of the mathematical absurdity of its economic model, as well as the psychology and character of its victims. Being that the authors were former adherents themselves, they confess in great detail their journey from normal people to addicts in a universe of "winners" and "losers." Families and friends become mere dupes to be used to enrich the MLM member and propel them into the"winner" category. The inevitable wreckage of broken relationships, lost jobs, and depleted bank accounts leaves the addict, incredibly, craving more of the same, chasing the dragon of that one last best scheme that will actually transform them into a wealthy "winner" - at the expense of everyone else.
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September 25, 2012Featured on Skeptically Speaking show #161 on April 22, 2012, during an interview with co-author Robert Fitzpatrick. http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episode...
January 29, 2021
Interesting to read about the original Airplane scam and how that evolved into the world of MLM we know today.
July 21, 2021
A very relevant book, despite its age. I read it just before "Ponzinomics", its 2020 sequel of sorts, and they complement each other very well. In this book, Fitzpatrick explains how changing values in the twentieth century has made America (and many other countries) more suspectable to financial schemes including MLMs, Ponzi schemes, and other pyramid schemes.
In one section of the book, Fitzpatrick tells of when he fell for the Airplane pyramid scheme. Despite knowing he was talking about a pyramid scheme, he recalls the event in such a well-written way, that you can understand why people fall for such schemes.
In one section of the book, Fitzpatrick tells of when he fell for the Airplane pyramid scheme. Despite knowing he was talking about a pyramid scheme, he recalls the event in such a well-written way, that you can understand why people fall for such schemes.
January 7, 2009
A book describing the mentality and psychology of multi-layer marketing companies, aka Pyramid schemes. Half of the book is unreadable New Age philosophizing. The other half is an interesting expose of the crassness and exploitation of these schemes and how the participants erode their personal relationships making constant sales pitches.
January 31, 2012
Excellent testimonial and expose on the history of the pyramid scheme and its modern manifestations. The chapters on New Age I did not find especially relevant or enlightening and ended up skipping parts of them, but the rest of the novel was solid.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews