Jon Taylor, PhD has written a thorough and excellent book about multi-level marekting: The Case (For and) Against Multi-Level Marketing: The Complete Guide to Understanding the Flaws – and Proving and Countering the Effects – of Endless Chain “Opportunity” Recruitment, or Product-Based Pyramid Schemes.

If you’re not familiar with MLM, you can see some interesting statistics here. Basically, the odds of a distributor losing money in multi-level marketing are greater than 99%.  Despite the fact that participants are almost guaranteed to lose money in MLM, these scams are marketed as business opportunities with the potential for unlimited earnings.

For some time now, we have been following the Jennifer McKinney bankruptcy trainwreck, in which Jennifer and her husband Israel McKinney were alleged to have falsified information and concealed assets. (In the world of forensic accounting, we call that fraud.) For those new to the site, you can read about the origins of the MckMama fraud, complete with solid proof of the lies.

Today a concerned citizen posted some information about the Cadillac Escalade Jennifer McKinney is now driving. Following a very suspicious car accident in October, MckMama began driving a 2005 Escalade. The citizen retrieved a CarFax report on the Escalade, which showed the vehicle being purchased in January 2012 and registered in Onalaska, WI. The report then showed the vehicle being sold in November 2012, which corresponds to Jennifer’s purchase of it.

Carlos Miller has been a First Amendment Champion for years. He has been unlawfully arrested multiple times for filming and photographing police activity and other happenings in public areas. Marc Randazza alerts us to the latest injustice involving Carlos Miller.

On Sunday night, Carlos Miller was lawfully filming at the Miami-Dade Metrorail, when 50 States security personnel attacked and choked him. The five minute video on Miller’s site, Photography is Not a Crime, shows that he and a friend were minding their own business and shooting some harmless video when they were confronted by security guards.

Popehat points us to a nice victory by SOCNET in a lawsuit filed by John Giduck, the man who claims he was defamed when a SOCNET user stated that he was fraudulently posing as a Special Forces veteran.

The court granted SOCNET’s motion to dismiss (even with no anti-SLAPP statute in Colorado), saying:

It is this tension that has generated numerous cases addressing the first element of a defamation action, i.e. is the statement defamatory. Not every untrue, uncomplimentary or offensive statement concerning an individual is defamatory.

Marc Randazza is exposing a scam being run on a site called “Is Anybody Down”. Ken White at Popehat has gotten in on the fun too.  The concept behind Anybody Down site is that angry exes submit nude pictures to the site (without the permission of the people in the pictures) and they are posted publicly to shame the subjects.

That’s bad enough, but the scam appears to go further. There is a site that appears to be related, called “The Takedown Lawyer.” For the low, low price of $250, an alleged attorney named David Blade III (supposedly a public defender in New York) can guarantee that your picture is removed from the Anybody Down site. (Note that since being exposed, the owner of the Takedown Lawyer site is now calling it “Takedown Hammer” and making no references to being an attorney.)

A couple of months ago, a ruling on an anti-SLAPP motion in a defamation case against Gawker Media (owner of website Gizmodo) got my attention. Scott Redmond, with his service called Peep Telephony (or Peep Wireless), was upset because Gizmodo posted a negative review of the service. More specifically, Gizmodo called the service a scam, saying that it offers “free” cellular service for phone calls, texts, and data access. A look at Peep’s website produced this criticism:

To be frank, this all sounds like bullshit. In fact, the combination of everything described was so strange, it almost made the company seem like a larger-than-life prank on the tech world. The closest thing to a technical explanation for Peep is this:

If you’re not interested in the saga of the bankruptcy fraud allegedly committed by Jennifer McKinney (blogger “MckMama”) and her husband Israel, skip this article. In the latest turn of events, MckMama has claimed to have two serious car accidents in the past 8 months that have landed her in the hospital. And oddly enough, both “accidents” occurred when MckMama was alone in the vehicle.

What’s curious about this is that MckMama, the woman who obsessively photographs everything about her life and posts oodles of pictures on the internet, never posted any pictures of her damaged vehicle. Two major accidents in 8 months, and no pictures to share with her loyal readers?

Lauren Stevens, former in-house counsel for GlaxoSmithKline was acquitted last year of criminal charges of obstructing a government agency. She was accused of withholding documents from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration when it was looking into allegations of off-label marketing of the antidepressant Wellbutrin.

Stevens has said, “I think the criminalization of the practice of law is here, and I don’t think it’s necessarily going away. The government will continue to be aggressive in looking at in-house counsel.”

On Wednesday night, Paul Ryan gave his Republican National Committee acceptance speech. And it wasn’t long before the “news” media came forth with the big lies he told. Five huge lies that make Paul Ryan a dishonest scumbag.

Except they weren’t lies. Instead, what we have is dishonest spin from the media being parroted over and over again. Apparently the hope is that if Paul Ryan is called a liar often enough, people will believe it, regardless of the truth.

It’s true. Anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time. Even if they are on the wrong side of the truth. And in this case, Melissa Dumas has suffered “emotional distress” because a television reporter accurately said that she was convicted of prostitution.

The Facts: In 2005, Melissa Kiane Dumas was arrested and charged with Prostitution-Sexual Gratification, a violation of state statute 944.30(2). Dumas pleaded guilty on September 28, 2005, admitting she committed the crime. It was a misdemeanor, and she was ordered to pay a fine of $125 plus court costs and go on her merry way.