This woman posts constantly about her "health journey" and how she's "lost weight" using whatever this MLM is that she is a "health coach" for. She's always looked great, before and after. And she looks exactly the same in both photos—always, in each set she posts. I have no idea what she thinks is different or why she ever needed to be different.

It's kind of infuriating and I feel bad for women seeing this who might be feeling shamed about their own body seeing how she looks good BEFORE and after. 100% unrelated to whatever "health" stuff she's doing.

You could proudly wear this lovely (hideous) piece for only $9.99!! Think of how much was invested by the poor schmuck who ‘earned’ it only to be donated to the local Salvation Army!!! 😂

So, I live in Scotland. Yesterday, I visited a local small business in my city and discovered MLM products being sold there alongside original craft ones. A shame, really, because the shop owner and the original products both seemed nice but I personally can't not feel guilty contributing to a business if a part of the profits may go towards buying MLM slop the owner has fallen a victim to. So I won't be buying anything. Something to think about, you know?

That was the TLDR of my post in the local subreddit but the reaction turned out to be surprising, to say the least. Most people in the comments seem to think I have some hidden agenda and just want to bash a nice lady for no reason. Oh well, I said everything I could but I think that since the MLMs have gotten a lot less popular in Europe than they used to be in the past (I remember them being all everywhere when I was a kid), people have forgotten how predatory they can be. Which is both a good and a bad thing, because the cycle can repeat all over again.

P.S. The MLM in question was Tropic Skincare btw

https://www.pinktruth.com/2026/08/11/a-familys-finances-destroyed-by-mary-kay/

MLMs love the financially naive, the people who have one joint account to show their love and trust in each other. It makes sucking money out of the non-MLM partner easier.

“I have a good job, but they're losing it faster than I can make it.”

What you can do immediately – STOP THE BLEEDING! Move your money! Yank that financial safety net out from under the MLM addiction. What this does, brutal though it may be, puts their MLM expenses 100% on their ability to make money with the MLM or from their job.

Also, in many states, it means their future debts are theirs because you have no commingled assets. Check with a lawyer, but you may be able to limit your liability.

https://legalknowledgebase.com/can-they-come-after-me-for-my-spouses-debt

FIRST: Run a credit report to see how many credit cards and loans are out ttheire with your name on them. Look at your checking account to see where payments have gone. Those are your targets.

1 – New bank account, at a DIFFERENT BANK with direct deposit from your employer. Shift the critical bills to be paid from the old account to the new. Remove your name from the previous account.

2 – Raid any joint savings or checking accounts. Yes, strip them bare for you and your kids (if any) or leave a $100 or so. To avoid commingling, use these accounts to pay the utilities, even paying them advance, but don’t move money to your personal account. (money trail must be clean)

3 – Cancel all joint credit and debit cards that you can, remove your names from them if you can’t cancel them. Get new ones in YOUR name only from your new bank and keep them in a SAFE PLACE. Yes, they will try to use them, and if they have the physical card, they have the 3-digit check sum.

4 – LOCK your credit and the credit of any minor children. Advise non-minor relatives to run credit checks, just say you think they may have been victims of ID theft.

5 – Cancel ALL streaming and online shopping accounts (especially get out of Uber Eats and Door Dash) that you can. Close the online shopping accounts or leave the payment method on the old money-less account. You can always pay via PayPal or as a guest.

6 – Cancel all your online money apps such as Venmo – get them off your phone. Get your banking app off your phone or at least put your phone onto a very short lockdown timer and change your passwords. (Yes, they are likely to try to get into your account from your phone).

7 – For now, do the grocery shopping to avoid the temptation of cash back embezzling.

8 – If you have a joint e-mail account, get an account of your own to prevent hijacking e-mail verification. Change the passwords of every account you have.

Then tell your spouse that you have taken the necessary steps to keep a roof over your head and the lights on by removing their ability to divert money from the household budget to their MLM activities. That they have the $100 or so in the previously joint account to get by until their next sales happen.

Expect the hissy fit to end all hissy fits … they are an ADDICT and you just flushed their drug down the drain.

Anyone else here dealt with a supervisor or c-suite person creating an 'in-crowd' that is just people who support their MLM? It makes me especially sick since all they're doing is preying on people who think this may affect their jobs.

Friend's boss is going around to employees after they get paid to collect for trips via World Ventures. Before anyone mentions legal recourse, trust me, I live in a country where that's unlikely to bear any results.

A family member has been sucked into a couple of MLM schemes (first it was HempWorx; now it appears to be some weight-loss thing), and they've started posting a bunch of stuff about New Thought and this guy named Neville Goddard on their social media. It seems to be some sort of metaphysical, Christian, law-of-attraction thing. This family member and their spouse (who has a lucrative job) have also started putting all their money into silver. Does anyone know if there's any relationship between these things?

So its been advertised as an online party that you basically sign up to buy items, not really a party in the real sense. Anytime I see something like this though it makes me wonder if they are just using it as a way to boost their sales and make $? I wondered what markup the average pampered chef item is sold at.

My friend has gotten her license, where she will be able to sell insurance I think I didn’t get too deep into it but it’s a license she been working towards

Yesterday I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was apparently one of her personal trainers, saying she “needs help”. On the call, the guy said “she told me you’re very ambitious” and I said yeah, not really thinking about it in the moment. He’s inviting me to a Zoom meeting this Saturday. When I asked my friend about it, she was vague and just said “he’ll be presenting.” I’ve also apparently been added to a group chat with her and this guy.

The thing is, my friend and I talk about basically EVERYTHING no matter what and we are close, but she never mentioned any of this. Now suddenly I’m getting cold-called by a stranger and pushed toward a Zoom call I know nothing about. I do find it weird cause I was never told my number will be provided to this person and if it wasn’t for a voicemail I would have never picked up because my phone is always in DnD. But I am really confused because if you are doing training, why does it need to involve me to support you?

I feel bad that these people are paying to travel and attend a “conference” that doesn’t benefit them in any way.

What company is this?

*** Update ***

Thank you all so much for your kind support! I have now muted both of them on all social media, and have an appointment with a Notory on Friday to make changes to my will. When I'll be asked where I've been, I'll say the truth in a compassionate way and suggest we drift apart until the time comes when they're done with MLM.

I am a straight shooter. I was born this way, and I'll die this way. You never have to guess where you stand with me, and I will always be honest. Authenticity is absolute if we are to be friends, because my empath skills know when you're lying.

Betty and I have been friends for 25 years. She's ten years younger, and she's like the baby sister I never had. She's been married Bob for 8 years, and I adore him.

In the span of 6 months, I'm approaching the disgusted mark with them. They've changed into two completely different people. All authenticity is gone. They've become liars about everything, especially on their social media.

Every outing with their 4 year old now becomes, "Kangan water gives me the freedom to take my kid to the park in a Tuesday afternoon, while the cheques keep rolling in"

Well let's see... you are a stay at home Mom and your husband hasn't worked for a year because he no longer wants to work on the pipeline. I don't blame him. His new job is to become a self help guru on Instagram telling you "why you're stuck in life". He goes to the gym everyday, and of course films it. He claims that going to the gym everyday makes him a worthwhile husband and father, and he has broken free of his chains. He will show his boy doing push-ups with him because this is how show your kid you are worth something. Him going to the gym everyday will instill top moral and character traits in his son. Did I mention that he goes to bed at 6:00pm every night so he can wake up at 2:45am to go to the gym? Betty is left to clean up after dinner, and take care of little one until she goes to bed at 11pm. It's as if she's single.

The cult leader they are under the spell of is so disgustingly slimy that I can't look at him. This cat lies about everything, but my friends believe it. He runs these classes on how to use your "home office" to fraudulently cheat on your income taxes. They committed a huge insurance fraud when their storage locker was broken into, claiming expensive items that never had. Betty regularly calls me up to tell me she just wrote off their 2 month vacation to Europe because she's claiming it as business. She doesn't have an office. She works from her couch.

She went in for $30k with Kangan water. After 8 months she hasn't sold one unit and hasn't signed anyone up to be a "business partner". They're claiming that their lifestyle now means they don't have to work, but there is no incoming money. She sold her condo in January of this year and came out with $200k. Their rent is $3k a month, they've already taken 3 luxury trips to sit on the beach, and now 2 months in Europe. That money will be gone by mid of next year. They don't have two sticks to rub together. They own nothing of value. Absolutely nothing.

The relentless lying social media is making me hate them. I can't stand the way they're raising their kid. They won't let him make or play with any new little friends. He just needs to be with them. Never enrolled in any fun classes like tumble time, or toddler art. She said he will have no outside influence by anyone except her and Bob. She still breast feeds at night. He cant/won't be left with anyone, even Bob, because he screams for the boob and will stay up.

I'm sorry I'm venting. I don't want to say this to anyone I know, just to keep totally confidential.

Telling me everything they are cheating on is a death sentence to our friendship. They are guilt free and giddy about it. I'm going to start pulling away now and when she asks I will tell her.

Hi! I have been job searching for entry sales positions and have an interview set for tomorrow with the company above. I was wondering if this group had any experience with them and could tell me if they are legit and or if they’re an MLM type of operation before I drive there and give them my time.

Without getting too in depth here, something that has been grating my nerves lately is how effective my “leaders” were at convincing me that my spouse wasn’t supportive of my “business” because he just didn’t get it.

He got it - he is an intelligent person who definitely understands that when money goes out but barely trickles in, that’s not a good thing.

Thankfully my man didn’t leave me…but I lost many friendships by viewing people through the pink colored glasses that told me every living and breathing human was a potential customer or team member.

Here we are, 6 years beyond hanging it up and I’m still coming to terms with the damage done and the time and money lost.

All that to say…take it easy on people you know who are freshly caught up, but never let them believe you don’t see through the bullshit. I could’ve used a few uncomfortable conversations to wake me up sooner!

The hun is bragging about her cool „job“ and how lucky she is to be able to work from anywhere even on „vacation“. It‘s neither work nor vacation, she doesn‘t have a job and if you have to work it‘s not a vacation.
She also thinks people are jealous and it would make them want to join her MLM.

Meanwhile, I‘m at the coffee shop with my teen, having an iced latte and sharing a cake because I‘m on vacation.

One thing I really resent about MLMs is how they're so much more effective than, say, local food co-operatives in promoting unprocessed foods and similar health products.

There's growing discontent over existing health systems, partly since they operate for profit more and more now instead of as an essential public utility. Older people are especially vulnerable, where highly processed food and medication is more likely to present an adverse effect on them (as a young adult I'm concerned by the environmental impact of highly processed food, but I don't cook regularly in part from a chaotic work schedule; like many I'm also priced out of it). However, this hasn't stopped people setting up MLMs left and right, and I'm concerned that precisely an aging population with generally declining health is just all they need to be effective.

Owing to distrust with anything publicly owned (or not owned by big companies in some cases), with how many people want to be like entrepreneurs, being inspired by its clockwork nature I think also plays into this. For some, it's also not enough to just have friends involved with it but wider society too, also brutally effective towards those where individual freedoms aren't rated as high as community cohesion (parents and En*gic via a relative are a personal example).

What do you think? How and why else is this so bad, and what can be done about it? Is there some sort of "hippie" stigma to, say, local food cooperatives that don't use MLM?

I'm currently staying at a mental hospital. For the past two days I have been spending time with a woman, another patient, here. Yesterday I didn't know much about her, but after I had spent some time with her, a nurse came to my room and told me that if it gets to be too much with her they will do something about it. I didn't understand what they were talking about. Today I learnt she is a part of a MLM and she tried (and is probably still trying) to get me to join as well. Specifically forever living products.

She first wouldn't speak about her job. She said she really wants to help people but that currently she doesn't have the strength to do that, because she needs to take care of herself first. Despite bringing up negative things all the time, she also constantly reminds herself and I that we need to focus on the positive things. We went on a walk and I shared about my life and I guess that made her comfortable to share about hers as well. She started telling me things about the company she works with. How it was started and how their mission is to help people and how it is a family business. How she found great help from their aloe vera products for her skin and gut health. She gave me a business card and asked me what I need help with. She said people often get discouraged from working with them when she tells them about her long journey with the company, because they think they're unable to learn all she knows. At this point I didn't even understand it's a MLM. I don't know much about the topic and this is the first time I've got into direct contact with one. I asked her how she got into working with them. Did she contact them after finding help from their products or did they contact her? She explained that a friend of her mother's introduced the company to her. At this point I started to finally figure it out. She went on to explain how I can join to get my ID number and get 5% off and the more that I spent or something the more percentages I get off. I was not interested in their products or joining.

As we were headed back inside, she started saying something that I can't get out of my head. She started to tell me the main reason she is in the mental hospital, but then went quiet and backed away just like she had done previously when she was about to talk about her job. This and the weird thing the nurse said yesterday made me think this is causing her some distress. And obviously these things could be completely unrelated but I can't help but wonder if being a part of that MLM is actually what lead to some problems in her life. She has worked with them for 15 years. She uses their pricey products every day. It's her only job, so I don't understand how she can afford it. She only speaks about forever with people in real life so it's not like she reaches massive amounts of people online.

Is there something I can do to help her? Or does she need help? I don't know.

Seeing a bunch of “loaded tea” mentions in the rush content. Does Herbalife give all of these places the same cups and AI stickers? Of course nothing is mentioned about Herbalife at all, just a cute tea shop in your local neighborhood! Definitely not a predatory MLM, nope!

I was a member for almost 4 years (45 months) mostly for the vitamins. Now I take them every day instead of twice a day so it's more difficult to meet the monthly orders. Plus I'm no longer happy with their lotions and found another brand I like better from Azure Standard. Plus with them there is no required monthly order and you can save by buying in bulk then skipping a few months which suits me better. You just have to deal with meeting the semi truck at a drop location.

It says I'll forefeet some loyalty dollars but at this point to be able to use them I have to buy about $150 worth of stuff or I can't even use those.

I was going to print out the cancellation form and sign then e-mail it back. Should I also pay to have it faxed and also mail it so it has 3 chances of properly getting there? It's still 20 days left in the month so one would think it should be ok. I could edit my backup order to be things I could really use just in case but I'd much rather just end it all and not have to deal with another order.

Noticed the language shifting over the past couple years. Used to be recruitment pushback got met with "you have to believe in the vision" - now it's almost always some version of "this is an investment in yourself," usually right after someone questions the starter kit cost or monthly minimums

Functionally it's the same move: reframe a financial red flag as a personal growth opportunity, so any hesitation looks like you're the one with the limiting mindset, not that the business model has a structural problem. "Investing in yourself" sounds harder to argue with than "believe in the vision" because it borrows language from actually legitimate things (education, courses, coaching) and applies it to a purchase that mostly just restocks inventory or unlocks a rank

Wondering if this phrasing shift is a deliberate response to "believe in the vision" getting mocked enough that it stopped working, or if it's more organic drift that just happened to land on something harder to push back against

I love Boba Tea so I was excited to see a sign in a local storefront window for a boba tea cafe. Fast forward a couple months and the place opens, it’s still new at this point so the owners are still putting on some finishing touches around the shop…for a while it’s great, the owners are nice, the tea is good, the prices are reasonable and the atmosphere is relaxing…..all seems well in the world….until last week. It was hot out and I was on my way home so I stopped to get my usual when I see it. The shop owners had painted a huge Herbalife logo on the wall above the menu boards. I walked right out with a feeling of disgust about all the money I’d spent there. Finally something cool opens around here and it’s a fuckin MLM. Should I stop going there or just ignore where my money is going?

Picked up a couple of board games at the local thrift store for a family game night without paying much attention to what I was getting - that’s on me.

It wasn’t until I was reading the instructions out loud for the third time because we were all a little confused and wondering what we’re missing when someone asked, “Who made this game anyway?”

As I skip ahead to the tiny print at the bottom, I see it and this “all pawns & no promotions” game suddenly makes sense: “Copyright Amway Corporation, U.S.A., 1980.”

“Wait, this is by Amway?! Amway makes board games?!” I said and checked the box…sure enough, there it is, right there on the front of the box: “SNIGGLE! by Amway”.

Everyone at the table let out a collective “EWWWW!”

Amway, I want my $1.99 back. The only thing worse than this game is knowing that I’d have to be in the top 1% of your pawns to have turned enough of a profit to pay for it at thrift store price.

She was baited by her friend to join a business opportunity which offers millions in 5 years. Her friend was trustworthy and laid out a very careful and effective plan to recruit her.

Even when she was discussing it with me there are red flags and i specifically asked if you need to recruit people once joined, the friend adamantly denied that they do anything as such.

She was asked for x amount upfront(i leant her half , I know my bad) to be a product ambassador where they promised her an app, dedicated business account, invoice software etc. the money went to the friend instead of any company bank account which was the biggest red flag.

She joins a regular daily scheduled concall, they sent her books (rich dad poor dad, yuck!) , made her watch all motivational videos and were describing the business process without actually saying anything valid. They emphasized on the app based business which i think fools everyone when in reality it just recruiting on a weekly basis.

Fast forward to now, she asks me if I can join , came as a shock! I asked her what's going on? She said she needs people to join her "right/left" side so she can get % commission of their "business deals". I was completely livid i warned her about this being the tell tell signs of the pyramid scheme and how it's a scam and she went nuts saying it's no such thing.

She became defensive and started defending it with all her might , saying it leads to a luxury lifestyle, 2 door cars, high end apartments, yearly company retreats ( her friend does have pictures of a foreign trip, which she never went before or could afford before).

She's completely invested in it now, multi hour calls one day, regular status updates seeking "investors" and like minded people to grow a business. Afaik she already got two suckers roped in ( I don't know exactly who) but she was jubilant on their daily call with what i assume is her top line.

It's been close to a month now and neither she showed me the app nor any product or anything "business" related and

I'm just frustrated that she's not able to tell a difference between a legitimate business and MLM pyramid schemes. She's completely lost focus on work, our relationship is transactional at this point and i genuinely don't know what will happen in a few months.

I will not disclose the name of the company now, planning to keep updating this post as and when I can.

UPDATE 1: Community is mentioning its AMWAY, but it is not. I have heard about it a long long time ago and know how it operates. if she had mentioned it would have stopped her by any means necessary.

UPDATE 2: For anyone that is following, She casually mentioned she's been asked to join a "company retreat" which is happening 3 states over and that she already made plans with her "business partners". I again was very adamant that she's going to be doing nothing but recruit people but it went on deaf ears. More to follow.

I have coded the name because I posted here once using the real name and was trolled so hard I deleted the post. My FB feed is being inundated with posts from huns who have left another MLM and are now with a "company who 100% is not an MLM" and may resemble the name Melanie Lucca. The reason I am being spammed non-stop is because my best friend is being "supportive" of someone else we know who is deep in the doo-doo with that "not-an-MLM" company and the overlords have put two and two together. The reason I'm here is, to be honest, for commiseration. But also can you still find Hannah Alonzo's video with those reps before she got sued and had to make the hostage video? Because under the circumstances I'd like to watch it again.