Lyoness and its love-hate relationship with 'MLM'

A few days back, well-known 'MLM Watchdog' Troy Doole published a highly interesting document on his website. The document, reportedly written by a reputable, highly-regarded person from the 'MLM' world, details why Lyoness (America) is a fraud, and how Lyoness (America) violates a number of federal regulations and should therefore be forbidden and closed down in the United States. For obvious reasons (e.g. to protect his source), mr. Doole has decided not to disclose the identity of the author at this time.

The document is pretty self-explanatory. As reported for a while here, the whole 'business model' of Lyoness is a mere sham, designed to lure people into a web of lies designed to draw the last penny out of the pockets of its victims. Because of that, combined with the fact that key information has been withheld from the victims before they decided to invest, Lyoness is illegal under every national and international framework of legislation, due to its commited fraud, which is a form of theft. Additionally, the many complicating aspects of the Lyoness 'business model', meticulously set out by the referenced document, show how Lyoness has been violating a large number of US federal regulations on, for instance, pyramid and Ponzi schemes, much like it has done in all the other countries its active in.

Have a look at the document yourself.

Earlier, the Complaint Centre has reported that Lyoness has somewhat of a 'love-hate relationship' with the concept termed 'multi level marketing' (abbreviated as 'MLM'). While in most countries where Lyoness promoters are trying to recruit new members, the amazing powers of 'MLM' to make everyone achieve 'financial freedom' are thrown around at some point, in the United States, one of the largest 'lifelines' within Lyoness has been instructing and convincing its members that Lyoness has nothing to do with 'MLM', but is in fact 'way better'. Like goes for almost all other lies told by Lyoness and its promoters, this lie is adapted to the circumstances. In a hostile environment towards 'MLM', the Lyoness promoters will argue that Lyoness has nothing to do with 'MLM'. In situations where it gets accused of organising a 'pyramid scheme', particularly in national settings in which 'MLM' is deemed legal, the Lyoness promoters will argue that Lyoness is not an 'illegal pyramid scheme', but a 'legal MLM company'.

The other way around, 'MLM' promoters are usually known for sticking up for each other and each other's companies, in order to protect their common interests. While this has been seen in a few cases for Lyoness too, the sympathy of 'MLM' promoters towards Lyoness seems to have reached an ultimate low point now, with quite many well-known 'MLM watchdogs', such as Troy Doole (as well as his anonymous source) and Ted Nuyten openly criticising the 'company' and calling it a fraud. Whether this is caused by a genuine interest to protect the world population from being scammed, or whether it is rather driven by the understanding that the support for such an obvious racket, may lead to severe damage to certain reputations when the whole scam (inevitably) falls to pieces. Who's to say?

In any case, once again, the Complaint Centre would like to stress: a fraud is a fraud, no matter what you call it.