Hundreds of thousands of Americans get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies each year. From Mary Kay to Amway to Herbalife to Avon, the list is seemingly endless. Each offers its own special spin on the products it sells, but […]

Tracy Coenen explains what a Ponzi scheme is: a specific type of investment scheme in which the perpetrator recruits investors and then pays their “investment returns” with money from new investors.

Defenders of multi-level marketing (MLM) are often heard saying that it’s a legitimate business method! Even government regulators say MLM is legitimate. And it is true that state and federal governments in the United States generally allow multi-level marketing companies […]

One of the common defenses of multi-level marketing is that it is a legitimate business method that has been around for a long time. I’ve also been told that if it was illegal, it would have been shut down. Some […]

Defenders of multi-level marketing (MLM) will tell you that some companies “do it” right, while some companies “do it” wrong. The fact that a multi-level marketing company like Mary Kay Cosmetics has been around for more than 55 years does […]

Last week, my friend and colleague Marc Randazza scored a big win for Briana DeJesus in the lawsuit filed against her by Kailyn Lowry. The case against Briana was dismissed after successfully arguing an anti-SLAPP motion. I have my own […]

Zelle is a popular money transfer app, in large part because it doesn’t charge fees to move money. But fraud is happening there, and banks aren’t giving the money back to defrauded consumers. If you send money to the wrong […]

Eight years ago, I wrote a piece about how financial guru Dave Ramsey sucks because he supports multi-level marketing. I was hoping that since then, things may have changed. They haven’t. Dave has even gone further with his support and […]

For years I’ve been collecting income disclosure statements issued by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies. These are the proof that you have almost no chance of making money in MLM, no matter what the company or product. Across the board, you […]

Last week I joined Leah Wietholter of Workman Forensics in Tulsa, OK on her podcast The Investigation Game. We talked about one of the largest consumer frauds: multi-level marketing (MLM). You may know MLM by other names such as: direct […]