Once again I see a fresh wave of new-ish members of forums (not our forum because we "edit" if ever needed), making many short posts in order to have their signature files
displayed as much as possible to promote their illegal cash-gifting
programs. Some forums are now blocking them and
deleting their posts in order to protect themselves against the
allegation that they're aiding the promulgation of this illegality; others are not.
I think the current economic
downturn and uncertainty is going to attract large numbers of people
into this sort of illegal "opportunity". Those of us making a living in
Network Marketing should particularly be on our guard and speak out
about them. Saying nothing is not, on any level, the right thing to do.
Ours is also the business model that gets seriously damaged in the long
term by the way these criminal programs market themselves.
I thought it might be useful to point out a few things and provide some helpful links on this subject.
1.
Some of these criminal enterprises dress themselves up as "multi-level
marketing", but if there's no genuine product (and in many cases there
isn't even a pretence of one) they are rightly illegal. In the US, Canada and all of Europe anyway - and I'm pretty confidently guessing in other countries, too.
2.
Their promoters invariably say things like "There's nothing illegal
about cash gifting" and challenge critics to point to the specific item
of statutory law, which varies from country to country of course,
saying that gifting is illegal. It isn't always statutory law - it's
sometimes case law. The reality is that they are trying to con us, and
sometimes to fool us by quoting tax regulations which are entirely
irrelevant. Gifting itself is not illegal, but soliciting a
cash gift from a recipient whose intention at the time of the "gift" is
to become apparently entitled to make profits by soliciting cash gifts
in turn from third parties is illegal. Don't get sucked in by
the lure of "easy money". People go to prison for this. Don't be one of
them. Don't assume "eew, well, that's just other people, not me".
3. Members living in the US may be interested to see this page on the FTC's own website warning about the illegality of these "opportunities".
4. In a recent forum discussion, my friend Robin kindly shared this link from the North Carolina Department of Justice.
(This particular one was shared simply because one of the people who
apparently didn't understand why cash gifting programs are such a big
deal happened to be from North Carolina, but information like this is
widely available online from just about every state in the U.S. and
most countries around the world. This just happens to be a nice concise
one, explaining the illegality unambiguously.)
5. I have no idea
how "official" this site is (I suspect not very), or to whom it
belongs, but if anyone's interested, I've recently come across the "Cash Gifting Watchdog".
There are also lots of "opportunities" which don't call themselves "cash gifting" but actually are. Typically, they have a "product" of which the sole purpose is to learn how to promote the business itself, i.e. not a real product which anyone would buy other than for the attached business "opportunity". Some people are gullible enough seriously to imagine that because there's a "product" at all, that somehow makes it legal. Others have a "don't know - don't care" attitude to the legalities involved. Some even have the sheer brazen effrontery to promote these things online, at forums like WAHM.com. For anyone with a macabre fascination in the seedy side of life, here's a link to a recent WAHM.com discussion. And here's a very recent one about exactly the kind of scam made increasingly popular by the current economic climate (look quickly before their Moderators delete it!)
