Scam Poetry: The Time I Was Recruited to the Cult of Amway ⚠️

Like many things on the scam speaker circuit, it is style and no substance

Predators examine greed then work it, install lies you love in abundance

Divide, deride, but also unite, have you subscribed as a fan, get you high on timelines promising profits pie in the sky, turn the mind to sand adding urgent pressure of time, cos “God wants you to be rich, economy’s taking a hit, stick it to the man, quit your job, stop saying you can’t and start saying you can!”

Here’s more bullshit… mixed with elements of truth and rhetoric:

“You a sheep? Most people are asleep, keeping their “J.O.B. just over broke” gig going even though they're feeling low, probing their existential loathing of a litany of woes, timidly coping via false dignity while fiscally in captivity void of desire, forever employed by those definitely destined to bestow thee faux retirement cos your 401k will be toast!”

Do you see? How they reel you in, I mean.

“I’ll show the way. Follow me. I know what you need. Money, purpose, belief.

"Spread the word, shed the skin of the former you you incurred: preach, teach, rinse, repeat. Grind, sweat, bleed, succeed!

“Oh, and Independent thought is actually bad, so it’s banned all day, always. Ok?

"Stinking thinking ain’t about winning!

“Lets take a breath. Impressed? Cool!

Ready to rewrite the rules? Nice.

"Believe you’re destined for success?

"You’re so wise.”

By the way, saying “yes yes yes” raising hands, participating, manifesting and even praying increases susceptibility to those with low integrity.

Every sneaky psychological trick, script, tactic or opinion presented as fact will finally fit your narrative.

Barely time to think when they speak so quick…

“Oh, and Forget about the terrible debt from joining so-called crazy schemes and courses, cos positivity supports us with status endorsements, actualisation through the laws of attracting forces, better relationships, longer marriages and fewer div– uh, never mind.”

The brain might not be be there yet but with all objections met – killed dead – the heart is thumping, pumping, excited and way ahead. 

Stage Guru scam wisdom has been imparted, so you drop your guard and then place bets to get started on Ponzi, pyramid, property – whatever – racing to the back of the room, groomed for several grand like a dog on command, filled up and overflowing with so-called truth.

“The best investment in a future nest egg starts with yourself! we take cash, credit card.. but no cheques.

"So, Who’s next?”

Roberta: Welcome back to another episode of Life After MLM. Today, we're talking about a topic that we've talked about a lot and we'll continue to talk about a lot but we're going to another continent into another country that we haven't really talked about this MLM in this country specifically, and I'm coming for them this year, so we're going to tell this story. I'd like to welcome to the show Darren Mudd. We're going to talk about Amway in the UK. Hi Darren, how are you doing?

Darren: I'm fine. I'm no longer in a cult and I'm not in a war zone, so I've got a lot to be thankful for!

Roberta: Yeah, wow. I just, yes, absolutely. So we're going to start with your Amway journey. You told me a little bit before we hit record but first introduce yourself and sort of how you got into the Amway business and then we're going to go from there.

Darren: Okay. Well, my name is Darren Mudd, and if anyone knows American history, they're familiar with that name. That was the name of the doctor, Dr. Samuel Mudd, who helped John Wilkes Booth escape Lincoln's assassination attempt. That's where the phrase, my name is Mudd, comes from. It means I tried to do a good thing, but I kind of fucked up, which is apt when you're in a MLM, supposedly helping people change their lives by sponsoring them, when actually you're not. So… my name is Mudd.

I was in Amway for, what, 12 to 16 months following university, so I was coming to the end of my graphic design education… no future plans particularly. I guess I needed the structure that was on offer by Amway, not that I knew it was Amway initially – I mean, who does? It's just an "opportunity" – and before I knew it, I was doing this business trying to recruit people, not very successfully because in my heart of hearts, I never really believed it, but that's how it started. And it ended in 2007, which we'll get to later, of course.

Roberta: Yeah. So, you joined Amway fresh off graduating from university. How did that come about?

Darren: A friend of mine who I lived with, a roommate, a fellow student on my graphic design course, emailed me to say that there was an opportunity about… something to do with products and being an entrepreneur, and… but I can't remember exactly, but it was: "Okay, what the hell is this? Okay, well, whatever!" And before I knew it, two people were coming to our house to show this business plan – two people that I'd never met before – but who, by the way, were very nice people. One of them was a retired head teacher and his wife was a mathematics teacher.

Very, very nice people, probably apt that, you know, I was literally still a student. They were teachers. I guess they had, you know, a way with students or young people, I guess that helped them. Very nice people. They showed the plan, I signed up, a couple of other people signed up – students that I knew – they dropped out shortly after, but it was my housemate, myself, and her cousin and her boyfriend. And that's how it started.

And it was this XS energy drink that was kind of, like, the focal point of everything. XS: "Could you sell this on the campus? How about this? The clubs, the pubs, the parties." So that was the proposition. Sell this product, get other people to do the same. Seemed pretty good on paper.

Roberta: It's really interesting that the focus was the XS energy drink and like getting it to the young people. I remember back in – you said 2006, right? – Jaeger bombs were a really big, hot drink at the bars, which is Jaeger in a Red Bull.

Energy drinks were showing up on cocktail menus. They were the things that you drank to pregame. They were the things that you drank to not get a hangover later.

So, it's really interesting that their focus is college-age kids who just graduated from university pushing this energy drink to the kids they knew on campus, their friends at parties. And it goes right along with the theme of how explosive energy drinks were at the time.

Darren: Yeah, I remember. When you say Jaeger bomb, you don't mean a Dexter Yagerbomb, do you?

Roberta: Did we just invent a new cocktail?

Darren: Yep!

Roberta: It's a Jaeger. It's Jaeger and it's Amway XS and it's called a Dexter Yagerbomb. Oh my God. Wow.

Darren: Yeah…

Roberta: No relation to Dexter Yager, but you have a bit of a relation to Dexter Yager as we get into this story. So, let's talk about one of the things in Amway that I think is really confusing to most people is what is called an LOA or a line of affiliation. I think in most other MLMs, it's just called a team, but the LOAs in Amway are like longstanding, like patriarchal, like have been around since the day it started kind of thing.

We've heard the name Dexter Yager before. It's come up in the Amway tools episode. We've also heard the name like Bill Britt and all these other people. Those are all the tops of the pyramids within these lines of affiliation. So, which line of affiliation were you affiliated with?

Darren: Okay… so, it was… I think it was Bill Britt or something, or Britt Worldwide. Britt Worldwide was the tools business and the line of affiliation, the upline was Bill O'Brien.

I remember my Diamond upline saying Bill O'Brien. So obviously it came to the UK in, I don't know, the eighties. I mean, my Diamond, my upline Diamond went Diamond in, when was it? 1992. He reached silver in 1983. He started in 1982. So I guess someone in the US must have sponsored my Diamond upline in the very early eighties. And apparently that goes back to Dexter Yager. But I think at this point, what doesn't go back to Dexter Yager?

I mean, if you trace back the origins, everything is like, he's like the single source of truth. Well, I use the word truth loosely, but like he is the origin, it seems. He was like one of the most successful Amway distributors, and he, I don't know what he even was: Double, Diamond, Triple Crown. I guess they had to invent names just to keep these people happy because they… I guess the founders, DeVos and Van Andel. I mean, what are they?

But yeah, it was Bill O'Brien from what I remember my upline saying, and I'm a little bit dubious about using my upline's real names as well, because I've been doing some digging and some of these people are now working J.O.B.s again. And if I say anything libelous, I didn't want to upset anybody. So, I have a series of pseudonyms set up so I can speak more freely. I don't want anyone coming after you or I.

Roberta: Good. Yeah, we don't want any Amway people coming after us. So, what was the name of the team that you were on?

Darren: It was IBS. International Business Systems. That was the tools business, and they always talked about irritable bowel syndrome as like the, to, you know, crack a joke and get people laughing. I mean, our Diamond actually was a pretty funny guy. That's probably why I liked him. He was always telling jokes. And obviously, like a comedian, really, like, you know, tell a joke, everyone relaxes and then they're kind of open to whatever they suggest.

But IBS, International Business Systems. Yeah, I have to say, when I saw the plan, I mean, obviously, we were told don't change anything. I thought it was terrible the way it was laid out. I was a graphic design student and I was kind of critical. "That looks terrible. That looks bad. I would do that differently." Obviously, you can't. So, you had to show this awful plan with IBS emblazoned on it and this irritable bowel syndrome joke hanging over it all the time.

Roberta: It's just it's so MLM, though, right? It's so MLM.

Darren: What, how terrible it is, how amateur it is?

Roberta: Right. To pick an acronym. I mean, they could have called this anything.

Darren: Yeah, they could have picked anything…

Roberta: They could have called it really anything. It doesn't have to be IBS. It could have been something else…

Darren: Yeah!

Roberta: …it could have been Business Systems International. And yeah, that would have been better. They could have changed it.

Darren: Did you have a tools business when you were in LuLaRoe?

Roberta: We didn't have a tools business. See, that's the interesting thing is when I talk to people, they're like, yeah, you know, you had to sign up for this and you had to get these books. Basically, we just had people saying, "go on Amazon and buy these books and tell your downline to get these books as well."

I didn't get any money if anybody bought a book. And there wasn't like any specific training like that. The only kind of tools business that would be comparable in like LuLaRoe would be all of the trainings that we had because we had they would go around the whole country and they would do these day trainings.

And I think at the beginning it was free, but then it cost money to go because they're like, "People aren't coming, they're RSPVing and they're not showing up. So, we're going to do a $25 deposit." And then at the end, they would give you like a free piece of LuLaRoe to offset the cost of the ticket. So, they would do those. They were called… oh, God, what were they called? I don't even remember.

They had different names. I think one was like Inspire Tour and they'd come all around and then they had leadership events like every three months and then they had the convention. But then they also had like different incentive trips or incentive meetings if you hit certain ranks. So, I'm telling you there was probably a LuLaRoe event like put on by LuLaRoe at least once a month, but you just had to qualify for them. So, it was more event based rather than tool based.

Darren: So, what were you paying for tickets for these events then? I mean, you mentioned the $25. I mean, that's not a lot, because we were expected to go to a monthly seminar every Sunday – we'd have to pay for that. There would be open plan meetings like at local hotels, like once a week, always on a Sunday. And then we'd have major functions where I mean, at one time, IBS was having these huge functions at this arena in Birmingham called the NEC. In the mid-nineties there were crowds of like ten thousand people going there. But by the time I was in it, they'd stopped all that because the numbers had dwindled. There was the churn, obviously, which is typical of MLM.

They were holding these big events at this arena in Telford, which is in the east in the Midlands, where I live close to Wales. And that was like a spectacle. It was huge. You know, like it must have cost a fortune to put that on.

So, we were obviously paying a lot of money for the books, the CDs, all marked up, of course, because I'm sure you had somebody on – Steve, I think his name was – talking about the markup on the books, how furious he was when he discovered what was happening. So we're paying all this money.

But then I knew that in LuLaRoe, you have quite a huge down payment when you join, don't you? Because I mean, you paid something like seven grand, didn't you? How much was it?

Roberta: Like closer to nine.

Darren: Jesus Christ…

Roberta: Yeah. I mean, like my whole time, it was closer to like $78,000 in like the year and a half I was in. I think I spent $78,000 on inventory wholesale.

Darren: Damn. Because when I think of you signing up to LuLaRoe and people signing up beneath you and you earning – that's the more Ponzi. Amway is not quite… I mean, Amway is obviously a disguised pyramid. You're paying for overpriced products, which is like money laundering, basically. You pay this amount of money for a product and some of that money goes to your upline.

I mean, I might as well just go to Target, buy what I need and give the difference to my upline in a brown envelope. You know, I mean, it's fucking money laundering. But we… it was only $100 or so to actually join the business. Nothing like what you had to pay in a LuLaRoe, so, I get Ponzi vibes from LuLaRoe. Not so much in Amway. Amway is more disguised, I think. I think it was a little bit possibly a bit more sophisticated. I don't know.

Roberta: Yeah, it's interesting because like I think this is another thing that goes back to when people go, "Well, my MLM is not like that." Like, "I was an Amway. We didn't have to spend $7,000 on inventory."

"My MLM isn't like that. Mine's not a scam. Yours is." And I think like, you know, these are all just very small differences.

Darren: Yeah.

Roberta: You know, "I didn't have to go to events every single week or every single night or every single month like Amway does. I wasn't required to go hang out at Target and pretend I was meeting people to ask them if they want to meet my mentor," things like that.

You know, we were buying clothes and we were going to these events, and I want to say, like, leadership events – a couple hundred dollars for the ticket. But it's also then you have to get there and you have to, you know, stay in the hotel everyone's staying at. And there's all these different extra events and they don't pay for all of your food. I want to say convention was maybe $400 or $500 for the ticket, plus all of the expenses. So, it's interesting because they're different, but they're still the same.

Darren: Yeah.

Roberta: And those differences come in where your money goes, right? Like all of my money was still going to LuLaRoe… was still going up the chain to whoever was putting on these events. But we don't have like that middleman the way that like Amway has that tool scam middleman. Because we didn't have that. Our cult fanaticism was the next unicorn print: "You got to get in on this! If you join LuLaRoe, then you get first dibs on all the unicorns!"

Like that was what got people to join was the whole like, "Oh, my gosh, I get first dibs and I can do this. And it's so fun. And I'm helping other moms." But it just you know, you've seen LuLaRich…

Darren: Yeah.

Roberta: …so, you know, like, that isn't really what happened, but that was kind of what people were promising. So, what were some of the promises when you were first introduced to this that made you go, "Oh, my gosh, this is a really great." You saw the business plan. You're like, "This makes sense to me. This is great enough to sign up." What were some of those hooks that got you to sign on the dotted line?

Darren: Well, I can tell you what it wasn't. First of all, it wasn't being a millionaire or having vast riches or expensive cars because that stuff has never appealed to me. It was more being able to make an income, however small. I mean, if it was like £500 or something like that, you know, $500 a month, that would have been great. That was it, really. I mean, this whole… they're always talking about how you trade your time for money and you need to get out of your J.O.B. "Just Over Broke" and all of that. But that stuff didn't really appeal to me. It was more just kind of like I just want to make a little bit of money on the side.

And I quite like the books and the training. And I like the structure of the thing… kind of like being at university – in a way – university was coming to an end. Right? So, what next? I mean, do I do a postgraduate degree or what? What do I do next? No plans. So it was like the perfect time, I guess, to get recruited. And it was… I had fairly low ambitions. I wasn't that ambitious. A lot of what they showed in the plan often made me cringe. And I'd think, "Well, OK, well, that's obviously not aimed at me. That part is for somebody else. That slide is for somebody else. Oh, that that isn't for me. I'm not religious. They don't need to talk about God – doing God's work. That doesn't apply."

There was very little that really applied. It was just: "Make a little bit of side money– side hustle." But, the more you get into it, the more they kind of try and encourage you to have all these big dreams and manifest and write things down. And "where will you be in three to five years? Write a list. You must write a list. You must manifest." But initially, the hook was that kind of it seemed kind of easy. It was just redirecting my spending. "I'm already spending money on stuff. Why not do it through this business and earn bonuses on it?"

So, people get into it for different reasons, don't they? I honestly wasn't one of these greedy people.

Roberta: Well, you were also really young, right? You just graduated university, 21 years old.

Darren: Yeah.

Roberta: And you're like, "Now what?" And we talked about this before we hit record as well. A lot of times these companies and even like churches and cults will recruit people that are very young, around the age of like 18, 19, 20, so, you know, because you just leave one nest where everything is sort of "This is what we do. This is where you go. Mom and dad take care of you. You go to college." It's still sort of that same where the teachers are like, "This is the schedule, this is what you have to do. Input the numbers, get the answer, take the test, get the grade, graduate."

And you come out of both of these very rigid systems of just growing up and then being in school. And then the next thing is like, "Hey, it's another plug and play. You already know how to hit the bell and get the prize."

And like you said, "You're already spending money on toilet paper and energy drinks. You might as well buy it through Amway. We sell all that, too." And not only do you get the product, they claim it's better quality and you're going to make money off of it. "You can create a business." And why not?

Darren: And I can go further than that. My parents divorced around that time as well. And I think they figured that out. So, the upline who introduced me, I'm not going to use his real name because if I do mention his name, I'll use… I'll call him Roger. Roger, nice guy. But he found out that my parents were divorced. And I think he was using that subconsciously. I mean, he didn't seem like an openly nefarious guy. I think he wanted to do right by me. I really do think that even though he was deluded, but he found out. And they often give you books in MLMs, things like what was it called? I forgot what it was called, but like in this book that I read, it was about finding someone's "hot button".

What is it that motivates them? What is it they want? They got us reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, and that teaches how to find out what people want. But it could also be finding out about a person's weakness or a person's pain or something like that. So, them knowing that my parents were divorced, would undoubtedly as information – intel – would have travelled up the line.

And I know that the Diamonds always wanted to know, wanted to take the temperature: who's doing what, who's saying what, what's the talk, what… you know, how do people feel? I think my… my, uhh, Platinum upline would speak directly to the Diamond. And sometimes a Diamond would say stuff on stage that I've been talking about with the Platinum.

So… they I think that they would zoom in on these things, like they'd find out what person's motivation is, but also like what is it that afflicts people or what's happened? Are they vulnerable? That's a common theme, right in MLM? I mean, you don't join an MLM, you get recruited, as you know, and it might be because something's going on in your life at that time. So, finishing university, facing up to the world of work without a solid plan and your parents have divorced and you've got to move back to your hometown… I mean, that's a lot that's going on. So, if I were to get scammed, then it would be at that point in my life.

Roberta: Yeah, you make an incredible point, because I think one of the most common questions that I get on social media when I tell stories like this is "How could someone fall for this?" Like, "I would be way more smart than this person. I would never fall for a scam like this."

And I always respond with "It has nothing to do with really anything other than vulnerability. Where were you in your life when this like very obvious scam to everyone else seemed like a really good idea?" And you being young, leaving university, going, "OK, now I'm an adult. Now I'm out in the real world. What's next?" Your parents are getting divorced, which is hard enough as it is being like, "Oh, everything I know is different now."

Having to move back home, having to readjust and then taking advantage of that and saying, "Hey, I know life can be hard. I know that you, you know, things don't always happen the way that you want. But we've got this really great opportunity here. You're going to have friends. You're going to have support. You're going to get great products. You're going to be able to share those with other people. You're going to be able to make some money off of that. And you're going to have this really great community."

And you're like, "Oh, my God, that's exactly what I need."

Darren: Yeah. I agree.

Roberta: And you fall right into it because you're vulnerable. A person who's not vulnerable when hearing that would be like, "I don't really need all of those things. Like, I'm good. Thanks, though." But somebody who feels like they're lost or they don't know what's next... having someone come and hand you this perfect package of everything that you're like, "Oh, God, what do I do now?" and they're like, "It's all in this package, just open it up!" is very attractive.

Darren: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these MLMs do speak to an unmet human need, I think, because it is about like religion is about community, and a lot of these MLMs are about community. I mean, people aren't making money, but they'll stay in it for some reason. They're getting something out of it, if not the money that they expected. And it usually is the love bombing of the community, the support network, the surrogate parents, perhaps.

I mean, I've read books where Diamonds have literally said to the downline: "I will be your surrogate father." They've literally said that, you know, which is fucked up. But…

Roberta: Yeah, I remember telling Deanne of LuLaRoe that her support and like, "love", was very motherly to me. I was like, "Thank you so much," like, "You're really supportive, more supportive than my own mom had been in my life."

And I was like, "Wow, you're like a mom to me." And I remember thinking that and saying that and telling her that. And her being like, "Oh, you're such… you're my little rock star," is what she would call me.

And I'm like, "Oh, my God," like, "No one's ever called me a rock star before." This is incredible. And feeling that and knowing that what I needed in my life was the people in my life that loved me to just support me and… and be there for me. And everybody has their own life and everybody has their own things. And what I needed at the time was community. And LuLaRoe was like, "We can give that to you."

So, I completely understand where you would be in your life having these vulnerabilities and looking at that pretty Amway package and going, "OK, where do I sign?"

Darren: Yeah.

Roberta: So how did it work out for you? Like, let's talk about the first couple of months being in Amway.

Darren: It was intense. There was lots of pressure, lots of love bombing, lots of what I now can see was, you know, stage-managed positivity and flattery… insincere comments, remarks. But, you know it feels good. It's like being on drugs, at first, and that feeling is great until it's not, because it's not normal to be 100 percent positive all day, every day. But it was pretty intense, and there was a lot of reading, lots of books. We had to plug into the system. If we didn't, we would make no money. If we didn't, we weren't serious. If we didn't, we wouldn't benefit from the vast wealth of knowledge that our leaders would bestow upon us. So, it was all about plugging into the system and getting us on these very basic books.

And the first book I was asked to read was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which was written well before MLMs ever came about. So, it's not as if it was written for MLM, but in the context of the MLM, I could see how all of the lessons therein applied to this business model. So, we were being asked to read books, listen to CDs.

We were consuming content. I mean, back… this is 2007… I mean, we now live in a bona fide content-creating world. It's everywhere. Back then… this was like before the internet was what it is now. So, we were consuming, you know, the tapes, the CDs, the books. So, it was like a crash course in network marketing, reading books like The Millionaire Next Door, which by all accounts isn't... now, that sounds cheesy, but we're obviously talking about it in the MLM context. So of course, we will laugh at it. But I've heard other people talk about it who have built real businesses and they recommend that book. But there are books like The Parable of the Pipeline, which was absolutely written for MLM. And there were quite a few tools and books which I actually thought were quite good – and I ended up throwing those out a few years ago – but some of them are really good. There were books like The Richest Man in Babylon, which was about personal finance. That's a good book. I've still got that book. That was written not for MLMs at all.

Think and Grow Rich, which I think is now widely considered to be bullshit. The Magic of Thinking Big, The Magic of Believing, What to Say When You Talk to Yourself, Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do, Leaving a Legacy, Prosumer Power, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. So, you get put on this curriculum and gradually you are allowed to know as you hit 3% or a certain amount of downline or whatever, you get different books, and a lot of these books were absolute fucking hokum, absolute garbage. It's the kind of stuff that… I don't mean this disrespectfully, but the kind of reading material you might read if you were undergoing palliative care or something like that, you know, if you're facing something big it might help you. But this… I just found it downright manipulative.

This material that they were pushing on is, you know – not at the time – I look back on it now thinking it was… but at the time I thought, "This is great." And I was quite happy reading this stuff. It felt good. It felt positive. I just wasn't building the business. I just wasn't sponsoring people. I think I showed the plan two or three times to a few friends who generally said, "Oh, that was quite good." But I just, I was basically imitating my uplines and even using the same jokes as them. So I couldn't even be me. I couldn't even be original because that was forbidden. You have to, you know, regurgitate, "retweet" almost the system without even reading the damn thing that you're retweeting.

You know, "You don't need to understand it. Just repeat it, just repeat it." So it was that kind of thing. I did approach people. I did do a little bit of retailing of XS. I retailed some of the skincare stuff, made a little bit of money there, had these like parties where like my upline would come to my house and like help me host a party. My dad was dead against it, you know, but when he actually saw money changing hands, like I could almost see dollar signs in his eyes as well, because at least he could see that, "Oh, okay, there is money here".

Obviously, you've got to pay to go to all the events, you've got outlay and all that, so you're not really making money. So, I was trying, but my heart wasn't really in it because it's just so boring. I just, honestly, building that kind of business, it's not that appealing to me. I want to believe in it, but I'm a creative person. And for you to tell me "You're not allowed to do this, that, or the other," that's just like… "Come on…"

Roberta: Yeah!

Darren: "…how is this a business?" But I tried it, I did it their way, and I call people up and once I get going, like talking on the phone, I can talk quite fast and fluently. I can be somewhat convincing, but then I just couldn't really follow through on it. I couldn't close these people because something in me just… I just couldn't do it.

I mean, I'd be listening to the CDs and I think there was Fred Harteis at one point, I think he's like, he was Triple Diamond. He passed away a few years ago. I was listening to this CD of Fred Harteis speaking a mile a minute and my dad said, "That sounds like Apollo Creed from Rocky." I said, "Does it?" And there's a certain scene where Apollo Creed is talking really like shit talking Rocky or doing trash talk or something like that, speaking really, really fast, like a mile a minute. And this is what apparently what this Fred Harteis guy reminded my dad of. And I had to laugh at that.

Roberta: I mean…

Darren: It was all education, education. That was it. They were just brainwashing you… you know, to get you to be a good Ambot.

Roberta: Yeah. That's kind of the point, right? How many of those books talked about like how to balance your account…

Darren: None.

Roberta: …or how to do a profit and loss statement or expenses?

Darren: Not a single one. It's all faith. You said it before, Roberta: it's all faith-based prosperity gospel and everyone wants to hear it. It's not about balancing the books. I always say it's not what you take, it's what you make. Just because you generate revenue doesn't mean you're profitable. What are your outlay? What is your outlay? What are your expenses? How much are you spending in gas when you travel to someone's house, when they live in Scotland and you live in the other end of the country?

You know, people don't take this into consideration. So, none of that stuff at all. None of it. No real business acumen. It was all salesmanship, all bullshit, shiny, soft-focus propaganda. And people evidently lapped it up. But still, I just couldn't quite get down with it. And that's why I was kind of not really feeling it. You know, I like the books. I like that stuff. I like the good books. I like the good stuff. I found a lot of it cringe, just downright cringe. But you can't say anything, can you? You can't criticize. You can't criticize the system, you know, that it's the sacred cow. You know, who am I? Three percent guy who only generated PV based on, you know, grocery spend. So I didn't do much with the business. I just didn't build it.

Roberta: Yeah.

Darren: Despite all the carrots they dangled, just couldn't do it.

Roberta: It's very intentional when the books that you're reading are all "Rah-rah. You can do it. It's so easy. I did it. Follow my steps." And no, like, actual real true business acumen where it's like, "How much did you spend? How much did you make? What other expenses do you have? Are you looking further than just your inventory that you're buying or your dittos that you're buying every month," right?

And it's interesting because another one of the comments that I get, and these are from Huns who will be commenting on my videos where it's mostly on the videos where I'm like breaking down the numbers and being like, you guys aren't making any money where people will get really offended. And they're like, "But I'm making money." And I'm like, "OK, well, how much did you spend?"

And they it's like a deer in headlights. Like, "What do you mean? How much did I spend?"

I'm like, "That's part of the equation of making money, the in and the out. How much did you spend?" And I remember I had made some sort of comment about an MLM I was covering – I believe it's Tranzact Card – and I was like, "Look, I just don't think that like spending nearly $2,000 a year to be able to shop in this like, store that I can use my points on, is worth it. Like, I just don't think spending $2,000 a year is worth it. And this woman is like, "It's only $500 to join. Where are you getting this number?" And I was like, "OK, let's break it down. It's like $500 to join. And then it's another $50 a month for a whole year. So, that's another $600 right there. And then there was a couple other expenses and I had done the math and it ended up being like just shy of $2,000 or something, something like either in the high 18s or the low 19s.

And I was like, "That's pretty close to 2000 to me." Like, "It's not worth it to me." And this woman was just, I don't think she had ever done the numbers or looked at the money like that because she did not respond. Well, maybe she just blocked me, which is pretty normal too. But I mean, I literally was like, "This is the math," and I typed it out. And then I got another comment the other day on an older video about Paparazzi, where I was like, "How much would it be if you only sold the jewellery to make $1,000 a month?"

And the math ended up being 444 pieces. And this woman commented and she was like, "Your math is wrong because you make $5 every time you sell a piece of jewellery. I said, "No, you make $2 and 25 cents because you're not taking into account your expenses. The jewellery costs $5, but you buy it for $2 and 75 cents apiece. So, you're only making $2 and 25 cents. That's 444 pieces to make $999."

And I did the math on that too. It's like, "You're not looking at the right number. You're looking at the big number, the one they dangle in your face.

"You can make $5."

"No, you can't. It's not $5."

And it's really interesting to me because these comments continue to come up. And I think it's because a lot of the people in anti-MLM community that make content are talking about the numbers and are talking about the money and the profit and the loss expenses. And it's causing the Huns to think. And again, because they're not looking at all the numbers, their equations are wrong. And they're like, "No." And I'm like, "Yes."

And then I show them and it's kind of scary because I remember the same way going, "Oh, I make $25 every time I sell a pair of leggings, $25 in my pocket. And it is $25 in my pocket, but it also cost me $11 to be able to sell this." It's just people aren't looking at the in and the out.

And I think that that is such a huge disservice to really any business, but that's what MLMs bank on, right? We don't know what business is. It's not people with MBAs that are joining MLMs. It's people who don't have the education in business. They don't have the time and the energy. They've never run a business. They've never been in business.

And honestly, being a hairstylist and running my own chair for like 20 plus years and understanding how a business worked was what made me go, "Oh, LuLaRoe is not a business because they're not taking care of these issues that a business would take care of. They're not refunding me for stinky leggings. They're not refunding me for wet leggings. They're not sending me new product for defective product." And I was like, "This isn't a business because a business would do this. Your wholesaler, your supplier would want to make you happy."

And those sorts of things is what I started to realise. Maybe this isn't what I think it is. I didn't even know what a pyramid scheme was. I mean, I had, I've heard it before, obviously, because I was like, "Pyramid schemes are illegal, hon," but I didn't really understand the fundamental definition of a pyramid scheme and how it works and how I played into the pyramid until after I left MLM and was open to the idea of looking into it. And then I was like, "Oh my God, all of those people were right. All of those people that told me you're in a pyramid scheme were right. I am in a pyramid scheme. What? How? I'm smart. I'm stuck into this." And it just goes along with like all of the things that we talk about and all of the things that happen. And for me, it was so very clearly obvious once I finally stepped out of the system and like looked at it in, in this much bigger scale. And I went, "Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Like it made sense almost immediately."

Darren: I love it when people argue about revenue versus profit, they go, "But you've made money."

"No, you haven't."

"Yes, you have!" I had that conversation with, uh, when I was unemployed on our version, our equivalent of welfare, I had to try and explain that to somebody. Roberta, um, your internet seems to be cutting out intermittently. So, I sometimes, can't hear what you say. I caught the majority of it, but I've just turned my camera off because it might help our bandwidth. So, if you turn off your camera, it might help the audio.

Roberta: Um, well, the cool thing about this is even though it can cut out while we're live, it records a high-def version and saves it to the cloud. So, um, it should be okay.

Roberta: It should be fine.

Darren: It should be fine, then.

Roberta: Sometimes when the camera is like fuzzy, it'll still be nice on the other end.

Darren: That's okay. And you've got the, the final edit, obviously. So, uh, it's always better to say it and not need it than wish you'd said it, don't you think?

Roberta: Right. Yes. So I, I know that it it's recording my audio on my end and your audio on your end. And as long as you see on the side where it says like 99% uploaded, as long as it hits a hundred, when we're done, it's good.

Darren: I'm going to turn my camera back on.

Roberta: Okay.

Darren: Hopefully, um, our bandwidth will be stable.

Roberta: Yeah.

Roberta: I'm plugged… like, hardwired in. So…

Darren: Yeah, me too.

Roberta: I don't know why it's doing that.

Darren: I've got a whole bunch of notes here about stuff that I was doing. Um, I've traced my, um, my former upline.

Roberta: Oh, really?

Darren: Yeah. Um, because well, I'll, I'll let you ask the questions, but, um, obviously it shut down and, we… it didn't shut down, but it was… Amway was neutered in 2007. It had its balls cut off is what I would say about, Amway in 2007. So I'll let you get to that, but I just want to say, I've got quite a lot of stuff for to tell you. And I've, and I've been, I've been investigating. I've been like a bit of a creep.

I've been kind of like, um, checking people's LinkedIn profile, their Twitter. Um, I'm like an investigative journalist. I'm like that woman in Homeland…

Roberta: I've never seen Homeland…

Darren: …you know, the first season of Homeland, played by Claire Danes…yeah. She traces all this, like this activity. I kind of like have these notes, like, uh, like I'm a detective or something, but a lot of these people, these former Diamonds went back to work in jobs because they were terminated. Um, anyway, we'll get to that…

Roberta: So, yeah, well, let's… that's a great segue actually. So, I actually pulled up your post that you posted on, on Reddit, on anti-MLM Reddit the other day, I'm going to read it.

Darren: Oh, right!

Roberta: It says, "Were you an Amway distributor around the time of the UK's DTI ruling in 2007? In 2007, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry, which is their version of the FTC…" Right?

Darren: I think that's right. Um, it might not be. I think we have the Office of Fair Trading, which might be more of an equivalent, but there's so many departments that shut down and then rebrand. The FTC has been like a constant, but in the UK, not so much.

Roberta: Okay. The FTC needs a restructure anyway, but that's another episode for another day. So, "In 2007, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) investigated Amway and its training tool organizations. Some of the Diamonds in the International Business Systems (IBS) training organization had their contracts terminated. I had been in Amway around 14 months and was actually relieved when this happened. It was huge… to see this supposed perfect opportunity fall apart and be revealed for what it really was, was quite incredible. I believe that although the downlines remained intact, the former Diamonds were trying to smear Amway in order to get us to join their new MLM opportunities that they showcased at a big meeting and seminar by proposing that we all get registered in the same way under stupid things like Success University to reproduce the same organizations. I've been going over the details recently and have all kinds of recollections from this period. Getting out was such a relief and being able to talk to people without wanting anything from them was a relief."

So, there's a couple comments on it of people congratulating you for getting out. Let's talk about this because this is really interesting and sort of goes into this whole Amway deep dive that we're doing this year.

Darren: Yeah, well, so Amway was under investigation. I think around 2006, something was happening in the background, not that I ever knew about that, because as a Ambot, I was discouraged from reading anything on the internet. I mean, anyone who's been in Amway would have had that experience. But in 2007-ish, it got to the point where it was obviously a serious situation. And my upline Platinum told me that there would be a moratorium on all sponsoring because Amway in the UK was under investigation. And this was a shock to me. I thought, "Really?" I couldn't believe it. I didn't care that much, to be honest. I mean, at this point, I was just looking for a way out. And I know that leaving is not easy because like Scientology, they will… well, I don't think Amway are as bad as Scientology, but they certainly don't make it easy for you to leave. So, there was a moratorium, a pause, right, a halt, no more sponsoring. And I thought, "Well, I don't fucking care because I didn't sponsor anybody, except my cousin."

And so this investigation was going on, and apparently it was because of the behaviour of other tools businesses in the country. So, it turns out that there were other, what do you call them, lines of affiliation in the UK. So, we were in the Bill O'Brien downline. Bill O'Brien was an American guy, and he sponsored somebody in the UK, and that person formed a tools network called IBS, which we've talked about. But there were other networks just like IBS. There was Britt Worldwide, which I think might, I don't know if that was a UK or USA tools business, and there was Network 21.

And we were told that these training organizations were giving Amway a bad name because these other people, these others – which is bizarre, I mean, there's even this level of tribalism within Amway, you know – it was these other Amway businesses and these other tools businesses that were giving everybody a bad name. So, there was a moratorium on sponsoring.

So, we had to basically stop. The meeting stopped, no more plans, no more functions, no more buying tickets to go to this or that, which I was fine with. And my Platinum upline would frequently call me to give me an update on what was happening, you know, just to keep me clued in. And he was doing that with all of his downline, because he had quite a few people beneath him. So, he had to keep all these people abreast of what was going on. So… and it got to the point where he said, he said to me, "Darren, there's a meeting that I really want you to come to. It's going to be at such and such place. I'll pick you up. We'll drive there. It's okay. Just be ready. We're going to go there. It's going to be really, really good. It's going to be really interesting. You're going to really enjoy it." And this was despite the fact that there was a moratorium on sponsorship, right?

So, I went and we had to pay, obviously. So, on the stage… the Diamonds were up on the stage and they said that their contracts have been terminated. And there was like, a big intake of breath, you know, from however many people were there – I mean, there was a few thousand people there.

"What?!" Yep. Their contracts have been terminated.

So, these Diamonds and then proceed to get on the stage on their soap box and start to decry Amway and say that it's not a very good business model. And they've been caught up in the crossfire because of the wrongdoing of others who are also Amway distributors and they are running a tools business and they're doing it all wrong.

"And now the DTI, the Department of Trade and Industry have come down on us, and we've suffered. Our contracts have been– not your contracts". I was still an IBO. Derek was still an IBO. All these people that I knew were still IBOs, but they weren't. So, basically, they were saying, "Right, we're done with Amway. Amway wasn't that good. Amway wasn't that great. I mean, it was great while it lasted, but we've got to move on because in business you have a vehicle and the vehicle is what gets you to the destination, the destination called success…"

This guy – this Diamond – oh God… he used to tell the worst jokes. I'm going to call him Drew Bailey. That's not his real name so don't go looking for this guy, but I'll just call him Drew Bailey and his wife, Daisy… this is a thinly veiled pseudonym…. he was telling jokes. How… I can't even remember what the joke was, but it was something along the lines of "An Amway business is a bit like riding a horse, but what we need is a car. And we've just discovered that they've increased the price of hay."

And everybody laughed and applauded on cue. Ambot applause, applause, applause, everyone applauding. I thought, "What the fuck is this guy talking about?"

So, they were trying to basically sell us on something different, a replacement to Amway. So now they were basically saying, "We have some better opportunities for you and you can register beneath us in the exact same organization that we have now. So we will be your upline. All you need to do is re-register under these new businesses. And boy, do we have some businesses for you!" And then that sort of introduces people to come on the stage and talk about, there was something called uVme, which is the letter U, the letter V, and then the word Me, which was some kind of online gaming, which was MLM.

Then there was Success University, which sounded very much like Trump University, although it wasn't property – that was a MLM. There were four or five opportunities, which were MLMs designed basically to replace Amway. And that's what they wanted us to do. And I thought, "I'm not having any of this." And my upline, loyal as ever, turned to me and he says, "Wow, how cool is that? Pretty good, eh?!"

And I thought, "No." And I didn't say that. At this point, I just wanted to go home. And the person who had brought me to that event– I think I got a lift home with somebody else, I got driven home by my platinum upline's downline, who is a doctor, by the way, at my local city hospital, which is weird – he drove me home.

And so, there was me and some others sitting in this car. I think this woman's name was Sandra. She was like, she'd recently registered in Amway and she was furious. She was absolutely having none of it. And she said, "What the hell was that? They wanted us to sign up to a brand new… we just signed up to Amway. And now you're telling us we can't do it!? What is all this!? And this guy was kind of like panicking. He's a doctor, by the way he's an anaesthetist or something. He looked at me to sort of help him out. I just shrugged.

He looked back at her and he said, "Well, yes, but it's a great opportunity. And, you know, if you don't understand what's going on, it's fine because you don't NEED to understand this business. You can still be a success."

And she went, "Of COURSE, you need to UNDERSTAND it!" And he kind of looked at me and I kind of came to his rescue. I forgot what I said, but I kind of, I came to his rescue and sort of placated the situation. He looked at me as if to say, "Oh, thank you so much."

At that point, I thought "This is the last time I will ever engage with any of these people. So we drove home chitchatting, blah, blah, blah. "Well, that sounds good. That sounds great. Yeah, that was quite interesting – what that guy said."

He dropped me off. That was it. Never spoke to any of them ever again. They called me on the phone. I ignored the calls. They got the message. I was done. I was out. And boy, was I glad to be properly out because I knew that there was, you know, there was nothing to go back to. It was done.

Roberta: Wow…

Darren: I mean… how could I possibly continue? I mean, shortly thereafter, IBOs became known as ABOs. So, it's not Independent Business Owner. It's Amway Business Owner. So, the DTI made this ruling, basically, and said, "You've got to make these changes. You've got to be more upfront. You've got to be more transparent."

So, there was a ruling, I believe, in 2008. I don't have all the details, so somebody can pick me up on anything that I get wrong here. But there was… what was his name?

"Mr. Justice Norris, a UK High Court judge, handed down a ruling." So, it was the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform versus Amway. So, I think the DTI became Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. So the DTI changed. It became a different department and then it became another department after that. So, it changed a few times. I guess the people working within it changed. I don't think there was much of an appetite to do anything about Amway. They got a slap on the wrist.

And Mr. Justice Norris said in his ruling, "I shall not order Amway to compulsorily be wound up, but will dismiss the petition if Amway will give the voluntary undertakings handed up."

Jesus Christ, this is some legalese. I think the gist of it was: "Stop misleading people. Stop being so bombastic in your financial promises and potential earnings. Just dial it down." That was basically the ruling. So, nothing really happened with Amway. I think they planned to move into other countries. I think they might not have done that.

But either way, I didn't care and I stopped paying attention and I was kind of glad just to be out of it. But clearly, a lot of people were annoyed, VERY annoyed, because they had spent, I don't know how many years of their life and how much money doing this, but they were seriously pissed off. And I was looking online, Googling it, "Amway 2007, IBS DTI," keywords like that, reading forums and getting people's individual takes on it.

And it became clear at this point that basically it was all about the tools business. These upline Diamonds were making serious money out of the tools business. I mean, millions, because you don't make a lot of money from Amway, even as a Diamond. You only make money based on the group volume that is generated. I remember at one conference, one of the Diamonds was saying something like, "If you sponsor people and they never spend anything, they're not generating PV. Therefore, they're not generating group volume. Therefore, you're not getting your bonuses. So, don't bother with these time wasters. If they're not buying anything, they're not buying it," which is all good, but as we know, Amway is about getting people in the business and plugging them into the system so they spend money on tools and CDs and books and seminars. So, when people, when this became apparent, people were seriously angry.

I didn't care that much. I know it sounds a bit harsh to say. I wasn't invested in it quite as much as these other people were. But my God, reading about some of the stuff that happened, I read about a guy who committed suicide. His marriage broke down – killed himself because he was in serious debt. It drove him and his wife apart. And did these Diamonds care about that? No, not bothered. And guess what they're doing now? Shall I tell you?

Roberta: Oh no, what's going on now?

Darren: Well, I'm going to use pseudonyms here because if I use their real names, and this appears in a transcript, I don't want somebody with a lot of money threatening me. That's happened enough in the past when I've exposed scams. So, I don't really want to go up against Amway and any former Ambots who don't want me tarnishing their name.

I'm going to call them Johnny and Mary Sewell, right? Not their real name, but they were like the top Diamonds in our line of affiliation, right? So that's my top Diamond upline. He sponsored Drew and Daisy Bailey. They were Diamonds. And there were some other Diamonds called Pete and Gemma Galloway. So, they were all Diamond. Now, they often used to brag that they were unemployable, that they wouldn't ever have to work another J.O.B. – Just Over Broke – job ever again. "It's financial freedom. It's the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, blah, blah, blah."

"Okay, we get it. Thanks, Johnny and Mary."

Well, they divorced, I think. They also published their version of events on their website, which I have a version of because I managed to get it up online in archive.org. So, I could actually see what they were writing on their website in 2007. They went on, as far as I know, to promote other pyramid schemes. But more recently, I found out that Johnny Sewell is working a job again. He's working in a firm of accountants in Manchester, England, right?

This former Diamond – unemployable – is now working a job, in an accountants’, and given his penchant for, well, I'd say being disingenuous about how he makes his money, I don't think I want a guy like that working in an accountants’ because it makes me wonder if he's laundering money or involved in criminality. Because I'll just say this: and you can disagree with me listeners, if you like… when I think of accounting, I think about it as the story of money, not the reality of money. When you… say, you are a bookkeeper, you record raw data: money in, money out. Accounting is a practice and an art where you can tell whatever story you want, and this is often where you get money laundering, right? So again, I'm using pseudonyms. I didn't name anybody. So, if anyone wants to come after me, then, well, do your best. But he's working a job. Now, the other guy, Drew Bailey, I don't know if he is still married to Daisy or not, but I did a search for him. I found him on Twitter. He's basically doing the same thing. Not Amway, but he's involved in MLM, or as he calls it, network marketing, right? He's… my God…

Roberta: Same thing!

Darren: …his Twitter timeline… same thing! Platitudes. You can do it. Believe in yourself. Ignore the haters. One day you'll be free. All these kind of like pithy quotes, which are poetic and quite nice in the heat of the moment, but ultimately amount to flimflam. He's still doing that.

And his mobile phone number is up there. And I've been tempted. I've been tempted, listeners. I haven't done it yet. If I do, I'll get a fake number. I don't want him tracing my number back to me and harassing me because it's not difficult to find out who I am based on my phone number. So, I could, I could call him up, I could troll him, I could record the conversation.

I could go, "Hey, Drew, how you doing? I want to make some money. I hear you're the guy to come to… how is Amway treating you? Still scamming people?" That's what I want to do. That's my plan. And as for the others – Pete and Gemma Galloway – now they chose not to participate in the machinations of Johnny and Drew and their wives. They didn't want to be involved with uVme and Success University. They did something entirely different. I found out – I think this is the same Gemma Galloway, I looked her up on LinkedIn and I'm positive it's her – she's working in recruitment and I looked at her job history and it's all recruitment. And if you go back to the period around 2007, she was doing executive recruitment. So I think what, I think what she's saying basically is "I was in MLM, but I'm not going to say that on my LinkedIn job history," you know, because MLM is recruitment. It IS recruitment. Johnny Sewell – before he became Diamond – was a recruiter, the top recruiter in his firm, according to him.

So, Gemma Galloway was a former Diamond, now doing recruitment and business coaching as well. And her phone number is on there. Now I'm not going to go harassing her because I never really took issue with her, but this Drew Bailey guy, real piece of work. I met him once. I had to shake his hand and make small talk with him. And I didn't like him. He was draped in jewellery. He was like Mr. T, you know, from the A-team, just covered in, they loved their jewellery. This guy, real piece of work, I thought. Just something about him that I did not like. Just smug, full of himself. He's the kind of person who would never learn his lesson. I don't know if Johnny Sewell learned his lesson and moved on, but Drew Bailey certainly did not. I hope Gemma Galloway did. And there were other Diamonds as well around the country that I never knew, completely different, you know, Amway business to us. And I'm sure they had to go get jobs again.

And funnily enough, when I was looking at Johnny Sewell's LinkedIn profile and he has, he has three LinkedIn profiles. I don't know why he needs three, but he does. Whilst I was looking at his LinkedIn profile, it said "People who looked at Johnny also viewed..." and then it showed me a bunch of people that I remember from Amway – people who were Emerald. And I can see that they've got jobs. They're working just normal jobs, you know, quite senior positions, but they're just back at the J.O.B. – Just Over Broke – as they would put it, you know.

So, I have this all mapped out in this word document that I'm looking at right now. I know you can't see it, listeners, but if anyone was ever interested, I might share it with them. And I've got the names of people who sponsored me: Roger and Sarah Payne. They were the two teachers who sponsored me. Very nice people. However, I looked up Roger on Facebook. I think him and Sarah are divorced. I looked at some of the comments on some of his statuses, and it's the exact same people who I remember from Amway. So, they're still in the same circles, the same people.

There's a guy called Anand Basu – not his real name – a pseudonym to protect him, Anand Basu. He commented on Roger's Facebook status. And Anand Basu is the doctor. This is the guy who took me home from that final meeting. This is the guy who I had to rescue because somebody in the back seat was shouting at him because they were pissed off. And he was the subject, in fact, of the DTI investigation where he had claimed that he was making serious money. I can actually give you the exact quote, if I can find it. I have it here.

Roberta: But he's an anaesthesiologist, right?

Darren: Yeah, yeah…

Roberta: That's one of the highest paid medical doctor professions. If you look up… because people always say MLM is number three, according to Forbes, the best way to make money this year. And I immediately go to the internet and go, "Top earning jobs in 2024." An anaesthesiologist is always on every single top earning list. So, the fact that he's in an MLM trying to build this residual income, probably for retirement, to have this mailbox money coming in. But like an anaesthesiologist should know better than to join an MLM.

Darren: Yeah, that's what I thought as well. And it's weird. I'll tell you something else about him later. So, he was a subject of the DTI investigation. And I've got a quote here. "Another testimonial is from Dr. Anand Basu" – not his real name – "which after referring to his appointment as a 'consultant'," quote unquote, which I read as being a hospital consultant, "explains that under the guidance of his upline sponsors, quote, 'there had been many intangible benefits, while my income continues to climb to replace my full professional salary.'" Now, it goes on to reveal that he made very little money. In fact, the most he ever made was about £500, ever. So why is he telling people that the "income continues…"?

Now, I think he's worded it very carefully there. Don't you think?

Roberta: Yeah…

Darren: He hasn't…. he hasn't told a direct lie. He hasn't said, "Hey, I'm rich. I don't need to work anymore." He's saying, "My income continues to climb to replace my full professional…" No, it didn't. Obviously, it did nothing of the sort. But he's, I always thought this guy was a little bit slippery. He was very careful with his words, very articulate, more so than I ever would be. He would word things in such a way that if you had him in the witness box, or the witness stand, or whatever, it'd be very hard to pin him down on anything.

He's like one of these like villains from 1980s movies, where you know he's the one that did it, but he's so clever that you can't prove it, you know.

Roberta: Really covering his tracks and using protective language and things like that to not implicate himself.

Darren: He works at the local city hospital. I went for an operation in 2019 for a septorhinoplasty. Quick story: my nose was broken many years ago, didn't set properly. So, I had to go into the hospital, have it broke, reset. I had to go under general anaesthetic. No, I didn't see him. But I felt uncomfortable knowing that he worked there. Not that he would do anything wrong. Obviously, he's not going to do anything unprofessional. But just the thought of him seeing my notes and going, "Darren Mudd. I remember that name. Oh, it's him!"

I imagined that like he might have like some flashback about me. I'm sure, you know, he'd do his job professionally and normally as any doctor would. But it just made me uncomfortable knowing that a guy who is in the position of responsibility and trust was also floundering in front of me while a woman in the back seat shouted at him because Amway was collapsing around us. You know, I somehow thought I hope this guy is good at his job. I hope he's like he's "present". I hope he doesn't make any mistakes. And, you know, I'm sure… you know, maybe he wasn't working that day… I don't know…. but I don't like the idea of doctors being in MLMs or police officers or anyone for that matter, like that, you know?

Roberta: Yeah, it's really strange when people that have like professional degrees do this stuff.

Darren: You want people to exercise good judgment, but obviously it just proves that anybody can be hoodwinked intoit. I mean, we've discussed this already. Anybody, anybody can be hoodwinked. I mean, it doesn't mean they're a bad person or they're stupid, but I'm not sure if Anand Basu ever learned his lesson. I don't know. I somehow think that he didn't. I don't know. I think he got involved in other bullshit and he's continuing to do it because he thought, "Oh, that MLM, that was just a bad MLM. There are others and you can make money and I'm going to do it." And he might be continuing to this day to be involved in this, uh, this nonsense, you know?

Roberta: Yeah. Well, I'm going to say what I say. Scammers going to scam, right?

Darren: Yeah. That's it.

Roberta: If you're in that sphere and you know how it works, it's easy to hop to another frying pan and start all over again.

Darren Yeah.

Roberta: And it is upsetting that there's professionals in these spaces, but this sort of like segues into these other scams that you have sort of looked into post Amway that aren't MLMs, but are sort of like the fringe. I get a lot of comments of people asking me, "Is this an MLM?" And I'll look into it and I'm like, "It's not technically an MLM, but it's kind of run pyramid-y a little." And there's a lot of common scams that sort of intersect and get asked about. And one of those things that I haven't talked about yet, but you actually have done a lot of research into is cryptocurrency.

Darren: Yeah. Cryptocurrency. I should just say I'm not a crypto expert by any means, but it's more the scam component, the deceptive side of it, which has a lot in common with MLM because it's psychology. It's the fear of missing out. And, you know, although crypto may not always be MLM, there's so much overlap, you know, it's very seedy. And during the pandemic, a scam became, a particular scam, known as the pig butchering scam, became prevalent in the West.

It came out of China and spread across the world through instant messaging and dating apps and stuff like that, where people would be making these big money propositions, you know, investing into crypto because "My uncle works in a trading firm and he has hot tips on the next big thing, and we can get in and make money and shall we do that," and blah, blah, blah. I scam baited a lot of these people and made YouTube videos about it just because I could, and there was nothing better to do in lockdown other than try and make homemade ginger beer and read Merchants of Deception. So I was…

Roberta: Yeah, absolutely!

Darren: That's a long book and worth a read. Scambaiting crypto scammers and my God, I mean, I went quite deep into this world and spent a long time getting to know people, earning their trust, making them believe that I was going to really invest with them. I captured it, captured it all on video. I made videos, I got voice actors to play the different parts. It was like a documentary, quite a deep dive, quite long actually. And it's just, God, I've seen lives absolutely ruined by this stuff.

I mean, the amount of emails I get where people tell me that they've just lost $300,000 to a girl from Hong Kong who they'd never met. I mean, sometimes, you know, like people have these voice calls with these girls, if they are girls, they're usually East Asian women. I don't know why they always use avatars of East Asian ladies, but they do. A lot of thirsty guys out there, I guess. So, people are losing these incredible amounts of money and it's ruining their life and they're telling me that they're suicidal, they want to kill themselves. And it gets to the point where, I mean… you probably get a lot of emails from, you know, MLM ex members and sometimes that stuff gets pretty dark, doesn't it? Would you say?

Roberta: Yeah…

Darren: And it can have an impact on you, you know, it can affect you, and you kind of like… someone else's emotional pain, can become yours as well. And you want to be careful there. So scambaiting is all fun and games until it's not, because it's kind of funny to scam bait people but then you realize that, "Oh, somebody jumped off the bridge last week." It was reported, you know, someone in Malaysia handed over, handed over a million dollars to some crypto scammer and then they jumped in this river and they were never seen again. You know, it's sad, heartbreaking stuff. And there is overlap with MLM. There really is.

It's… I think the same kinds of people who get hooked into MLM will get hooked into these crypto scams because these crypto scammers spend a lot of time getting to know you and finding out stuff about you that they can use against you. As it was described to me in the early days of Amway, when I was reading those books, "Finding out a person's hot button," which is, you know, "What motivates them or what bothers them? What's their weakness?"

You know, you might confide in this total stranger who messages you on WhatsApp or somebody that you match with on Tinder, and you might end up telling them about how you've got to pay the hospital bills for your grandmother or whatever. And they'll use that against you because these people are usually a team of people. You're probably talking to a team of 10-15 people, and they will get together in a little boardroom and discuss how best to scam you. It is a full-time operation. We're talking full-time businesses. These people have salaried jobs. In some cases, they're kept prisoner. They're made to do this stuff. There's human trafficking.

There is a well-known compound in Cambodia. Nobody can seem to do anything about it because it's out of our jurisdiction as Westerners. I mean, the American authorities can't go in there and order the Cambodian government to turn over documents and turn over these people that operate in this compound in which people are literally held prisoner. If you search for the BBC documentary, The Pig Butchering Scam, you can find out all about that. In fact, that's a very good documentary because it's actually done in a very similar aesthetic to Squid Game. There's something Squid Gamey about it.

People are held. People often go to this… so like they could be Chinese, Malaysians, Hong Kongers or some other Chinese diaspora. They will answer a job ad where they have been promised, "Earnings up to however much you want to earn," blah, blah, blah. "It's in Malaysia." It's in this country. "It's in Cambodia." So, they go to Cambodia, they go to this what is ostensibly a call centre and then they realize that it's not that. And they end up literally imprisoned. They are beaten, raped and murdered. And they are made to scam all day long.

So, when you get that WhatsApp message come through on your phone and it says, "Hi, is that David? This is Lydia. I'm so sorry. It's about the house. I'll drop off the key with the neighbour."

You go, "Huh? Sorry, you have the wrong number." And then she'll say, "Oh, sorry, I meant to contact so and so about the sale of the house. I'm so sorry to have bothered you." And then it's supposed to kind of turn into a chance meeting online, digitally, you know, over WhatsApp. And it works. In some cases, people get chit chatting to this attractive woman who has a picture of an attractive young girl as the profile photo. Usually, it's people that are lonely or dissatisfied or something's happened in their life. They get chit chatting because they need some company. And guess what? There's a crypto proposition. "Hey, that thing you were telling me about your grandmother. Well, maybe I could actually help because I've been making money recently. I actually earned $6,000 yesterday. And if you want, I could show you how to do the same thing. And then you'd have enough money to help your grandmother and you would have the time and freedom to do whatever you like."

So, this is how it's happening. It's like these propositions, which. It's like a numbers game, right? It only really works if you're in the market for it. Not that necessarily, but if you're dissatisfied, do you know what I mean?

Roberta: Yeah.
Darren: It's kind of the way I got sucked into Amway, like it just happened to be that the scammers' script fit my circumstances in 2007, you know, and the person who, you know, by the way, the person who sponsored me wasn't necessarily knowingly scamming me, but the whole Amway machine was set up to do that. You know, it was to get me in. So, you get these people on WhatsApp in 2024 and going back to, I'd say, 2020 when the pandemic hit, you get these people just getting in touch with you for a chat, not that they know you. They want to be friends. They're planning to come and visit you in your country. They own a factory or they are in the fashion business. That's a typical one: in the fashion business and owns a factory. "I'm going to be in London next year and it will be great to meet up."

So, they're trying to establish trust. That's how it goes. And people are handing over astronomical amounts of money. It's mind boggling to me. And I scam bait them. But I've stopped doing it more recently because I don't know which of these people are being trafficked versus which of them are just scumbags, you know.

Roberta: Yeah. Wow. It's really interesting. Like a digital scammer meet cute. I've definitely gotten those messages before. It's like, "Hey, I've got to cancel tonight, but maybe…"

And I was like, "Who is this?" And they're like, "Oh…" And I was like, "Oh, it's a scammer." Block. Like, it's wild. It's wild that people get those. I mean, because I know I get them. I know there's probably people listening right now going, "Oh, yeah, I get those too." Block them.

Darren: Yeah, you've got to. Yeah, you've got to block them. I mean, sometimes people will scam bait and they will screenshot their scambaiting stuff and put it on Reddit. And it's kind of entertaining. There's someone who does it on LinkedIn and it is entertaining and it gets lots of likes and shares and stuff. But I've kind of stopped doing it because it's a little bit it's a bit depressing to me, really. I've had enough of it.

Roberta: It's mentally taxing.

Darren: Yeah, it is because you've got to put time and effort into it. I mean, if you're doing it to generate content, then be careful because it's not always very wholesome. You know, I know we're talking about scams and we're trying to teach people a lesson. Right? Sometimes people are just trying to embarrass a scammer to get likes and shares. And that's as far as it goes. You know, nothing good is really coming out of it. And you don't know who's texting you. I mean, if this person fails to scam you, they may get beaten for it.

Roberta: Wow. That is… scambaiting is something that I've wanted to get into because it does have so many intersections. So, I'm very thankful for you for opening up this topic, because I can't even tell you how many times people are like, "Is this an MLM? Because it's hitting all the red flags you talk about. But I cannot find a team aspect. I cannot find a join link. I cannot find anything. But they're love bombing. They're like going after vulnerable people. They're going after people who don't know any better."

And I'm like, "Yes, it's not an MLM. It's MLM adjacent. It's scam adjacent. It is definitely something to look into and something to be aware of. Block it, ignore it, move on," like, "Leave it, leave it be." And again, like you say, the scam baiters, it is really, really mentally taxing to listen to some of these stories.

I know on my show, sometimes I just have to take breaks from like recording and editing because there's like so many heavy episodes, which lead to even more heavy episodes. And I'm just like, "Oh, my gosh, like I can't I can't listen to another Scientology horror story this week. Like, let's bump it till next week," because it is so horrific talking about cults and scams and multi-level marketing and the devastation that it wrecks on these people's lives.

Like you're talking about people wanting to end their lives, people's marriages failing, they're losing all of their savings, they're financially destroyed, because a couple years ago, they were vulnerable. And they believed all of the lies that the person trying to get them in said. So, it's… to me, it is a huge problem. It is something that I want to focus on. It is something that I want to help educate on. So again, like I said, I really, really thank you for opening up the conversation about adjacent scams and scam baiting.

Darren: Yeah, my pleasure.

Roberta: Of course, one of the things that you sent me was a slam poetry that you wrote. And I was wondering if maybe you would like to perform it for us because it's awesome.

Darren: Yeah, sure. Okay, I can do that. Um, I'm just going to take a sip of my tea because my throat is a little sore.

Roberta: Of course. How British of you?

Darren: It's not actual tea. It's kind of like honey and lemon. But yeah, same, same intent and purpose. Yeah, I thought I'd perform this. So I'm actually dressed like a Ambot.

Roberta: Oh, perfect. And we're going to actually post this video on YouTube and other places so that you guys can see the whole thing because it's quite, it's quite the spectacle. All right, Darren, take it away.

Darren: I call this scam poetry.

Like many things on the scam speaker circuit, it is style and no substance. Predators examine greed then work it, install lies you love in abundance…

Divide, deride, but also unite, have you subscribed as a fan, get you high on timelines promising profits pie in the sky, turn the mind to sand adding urgent pressure of time, cos

"God wants you to be rich, economy's taking a hit, stick it to the man, quit your job, stop saying you can't and start saying you can!"

Here's more bullshit… mixed with elements of truth and rhetoric:

"You a sheep? Most people are asleep, keeping their "J.O.B. just over broke" gig going even though they're feeling low, probing their existential loathing of a litany of woes, timidly coping via false dignity while fiscally in captivity void of desire, forever employed by those definitely destined to bestow thee faux retirement cos your 401k will be toast!"

Do you see? How they reel you in, I mean.

"I'll show the way. Follow me. I know what you need. Money, purpose, belief. Spread the word, shed the skin of the former you you incurred: preach, teach, rinse, repeat. Grind, sweat, bleed, succeed! Oh, and Independent thought is actually bad, so it's banned all day, always. Ok? Stinking thinking ain't about winning! Let’s take a breath. Impressed? Cool! Ready to rewrite the rules? Nice. Believe you're destined for success? You're so wise."

By the way, saying "yes yes yes" raising hands, participating, manifesting and even praying increases susceptibility to those with low integrity. Every sneaky psychological trick, script, tactic or opinion presented as fact will finally fit your narrative. Barely time to think when they speak so quick…

"Oh, and Forget about the terrible debt from joining so-called crazy schemes and courses, cos positivity supports us with status endorsements, actualisation through the laws of attracting forces, better relationships, longer marriages and fewer div– uh, never mind."

The brain might not be there yet but with all objections met – killed dead – the heart is thumping, pumping, excited and way ahead.

Stage Guru scam wisdom has been imparted, so you drop your guard and then place bets to get started on Ponzi, pyramid, property – whatever – racing to the back of the room, groomed for several grand like a dog on command, filled up and overflowing with so-called truth.

"The best investment in a future nest egg starts with yourself! we take cash, credit card.. but no cheques. So, Who's next?"

Roberta: Amazing. I loved that.

Darren: Did you get that?

Roberta: Yes, absolutely. That was fantastic, Darren.

Darren: Great. Nice.

Roberta: I absolutely loved that. It makes me want to like Lin-Manuel Miranda do an MLM musical, like a scam musical.

Darren: It would be so good. Jerry Spring the Musical… now needs to be like an MLM musical, doesn't it? That'd be great.

Imagine that. Who'd fund it? I mean, it would probably get sued and shut down by goddamn whoever's in government, whoever's paid for by Amway, probably Betsy DeVos if Trump gets in again.

Roberta: Right. They're watching it and they go, wait, is this fucking play about us?

Darren: Maybe, you're protected if it's like satire. If you're doing it for satirical reasons, it's not a direct attack. That'd be good.

Roberta: I mean, they were able to make Book of Mormon and it won all kinds of Tonys. So, I don't know why we can't have Scamway the musical. Like, it just makes sense to me.

Darren: I'd love to see that. That would be hilarious.

Roberta: It would be really good. Well, that was really fantastic. Thank you so much.

You guys can check that out. Kayla's going to do her magic and we're going to post that on a video platform so that you can see it. Maybe TikTok, YouTube, wherever.

I'm not sure, but we'll share all the links in the show notes when it's up. And it's just fantastic, Darren. I really liked it. I caught myself so many times being like, dang, "Dook at you," just like flowing and the rhyming and very, very, very impressive. I really enjoyed that. And I've really enjoyed our conversation today, talking about so many different topics and bringing things out into the open.

These are absolutely things that we are going to continue talking about this year. It's all about educating about MLMs and scams and helping people see it. Because like I said, people reach out and go, is this an MLM? I want them to be able to look at it and go, "Oh, no, it's kind of MLM adjacent but this is why it's a scam. And this is why I see these red flags.

Red flag education is the theme for 2024. So, thank you for being a part of it. Where can everybody find you on social media?

Darren: I'm on LinkedIn. That's my primary social media network. You can find that if you go to smallbizgeek.co.uk, smallbizgeek.co.uk, you can find the link to LinkedIn and it would be great to connect with you. Please send me a direct message if you want to or email me through the website.

Roberta: Perfect. Well, are you ready to do some rapid-fire questions?

Darren: Sure.

Roberta: All right. Darren, give me one word that encompasses how you feel about multi-level marketing.

Darren: Apathetic.

Roberta: Give me a warning to somebody who wants to join an MLM.

Darren: What's going on in your life right now?

Roberta: Give me the worst MLM in your opinion.

Darren: Does Scientology count?

Roberta: I don't… Scientology, we did kind of prove that they do sort of have an MLM arm. So yeah, you can say Scientology.

Darren: I'd say that, I think. Either that or Amway.

Roberta: What was the hardest thing you've ever done?

Darren: Broke shouts, wealth whispers, but all talk is cheap.

Roberta: And give me a positive takeaway from your time in Amway.
Darren: It made me want to figure out how to actually make the money the right way.

Roberta: I like that. I like that a lot. Well again, I want to say thank you for sharing your story, being vulnerable and helping educate others. Not only the scam of Amway, but the scam of scam baiting and crypto and all of these other things we need to be looking out for when we're vulnerable and on the internet.

Darren: Yeah. Well thank you for having me, Roberta, it's been a pleasure.