S1 E10: The American Way

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Hey, dream listeners.

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Previously on The Dream.

Turns out that what I'd done was to sign up to sell Herbalize.

The phone call we'd had was to explain to me how I could go on to become a supervisor without even selling a thing.

All I had to do was buy $5,000 worth of product and ended up buttoning up to the next level.

Essentially, when MLMs came to the attention of the FTC, they went after them pretty hard for about 15 years.

And during that 15 years, they had some successes and then ultimately had a case

that would define how multi-level marketing as an industry would go forward.

Wow.

And they lost that case.

Is it possible, really, that the FTC was going to truly close down a company that had such political influence with the sitting president that they could go in and meet with him privately and discuss their issue?

I don't think so.

I think anyone with some willingness to look at political realities would say that was never going to happen.

The last time we heard from Dan, he was trying to figure out why the MLM trial of the century, the FTC versus Amway 1979, ended the way it did.

Why did the administrative law judge and the FTC Commission decide to ignore Joe Brownman's evidence when that exact same evidence had won him earlier MLM trials?

What was Joe truly up against?

Dan turned to our expert, Robert Fitzpatrick, for an answer.

And what you're about to hear reminded me of that old trope where someone opens a closet door and a bowling ball rolls out, knocking them unconscious.

And then they come to and stand up and the rest of their junk falls on them.

That's what it felt like when Robert started talking Dan through the 40 years following that Amway decision, detailing MLMs and their ties to Washington.

When Dan finally left the studio after his last interview, I could have sworn I saw a halo of birds and exclamation points floating around his head.

I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream, episode 10: The American Way.

So last time we talked, where were we?

Well, the Amway trial had just ended.

Joe Bramman was confused and a little bummed because he had presented all this evidence that in earlier trials had won him those cases.

But in the Amway trial, it didn't.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I spoke to Robert to see if I could get filled in on any reason as to why.

And he was telling me about some of the political connections that the founders of Amway, Jay Van Andel, and Dick DeVos, had.

Like running the biggest business lobby

in the country, the Chamber of Commerce.

Yep, Jay Van Andel was the head of the Chamber of Commerce, and Dick DeVos was the finance chair of the Republican National Committee, which meant he was getting a lot of money for candidates.

So insane.

Yeah, it's totally crazy.

But actually, what I found out is that the Amway trial was just the start of the story.

Amway and their cohorts in the industry started inserting themselves more and more into national politics until essentially they were the politicians.

Thankfully, Robert Fitzpatrick has been piecing a lot of this information together.

Ronald Reagan becomes president.

And as reported in the media, DeVos and Van Andel became frequent visitors to Washington and were welcomed in the White House.

The Amway dudes went to dinners with heads of state, presidents, our own and others.

And at one particular dinner, they got sat next to Alexander Haig, who you might remember was Nixon's White House chief of staff during Watergate.

Guess what he went on to do after that job?

Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan.

And then what did he do after that job?

Paid consultant for Amway.

Alexander Haig, the Alexander Haig.

Not every diplomat at the time loved these guys.

At the same time that they were hobnobbing with high-level cabinet members in the U.S., the Canadian government was accusing them of defrauding the country.

Yes, the entire country of Canada, by evading taxes.

They'd issued arrest warrants for Dick and Jay.

The Mounties were on their tails.

So here you've got two dudes who just a couple years earlier were on trial for fraud and who now, in 1984, were some of Canada's most wanted.

Here they are, bopping around with the president.

They even asked Reagan to come speak at an Amway rally in Atlanta.

Some of the representatives of the Reagan administration were, as they said, queasy about associating Reagan so closely with Amway in public.

But they also knew that Amway had been perhaps the most important fundraiser for the Reagan administration.

So that sort of trumped these other issues.

That event was held in January, and it was held the day after the State of the Union message was delivered to Congress.

I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair.

I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun, fresh from the burning creative hand of God.

I see great days ahead for men and women of will and vision.

Reagan literally flew from addressing Congress to the next day addressing an Amway event.

The way they got around the queasiness of some Reagan administration people

was they recast the event as sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.

This was an easy thing to do since Van Andel had been chairman of the Chamber of Commerce earlier.

How were you able to find out that that was an actual Amway event?

Well, it was scheduled as an Amway event.

That's what it was.

It was going to be an Amway rally, a giant one in Atlanta.

This is all in the news account.

This is how the invitation began.

Come and speak at an Amway event.

Actually, they renamed the rally to Spirit of America, Salute to Free Enterprise.

Want to know how I found that out?

There's a video of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

To much fanfare and applause, the President of the United States of America walks on stage and shakes hands with Dick DeVos and Jay Van Andel.

In fact, it's Jay Van Andel who introduces him.

This great hall,

this great hall, large as it is,

has proven to be too small for the crowd that has come here today.

And so,

You'll be pleased to know that we've been able to get another auditorium nearby with television screens to take care of the rest of the folks who couldn't get in here.

This rally,

this rally is called the Spirit of America, and there is no better exponent of this than President Reagan.

Thank you very much.

Well, if you'd have done this a few years ago when I was making bedtime for Bonzo, I'd still be there.

Well, thank you very much, Jay.

Governor Harris,

Congressman Gingrich, and Levitas, and ladies and gentlemen.

It's people like you who show us the heart of America is good.

Perhaps you heard my speech to the nation last night on the state of our union.

Reagan is introducing a whole new philosophy of deregulation, trickle-down economics, supply-side economics, and so on.

And this is spreading across the country now, this whole new philosophy.

Reaganomics.

That's one of those things you know the name of and how to use it in conversation at a party with someone who hopefully knows less about it than you do.

Right?

No?

Anyway, I looked it up and here's the gist.

Reaganomics was all about cutting government spending, including an awesome idea Reagan and his cohorts cooked up to get rid of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection.

That's the one that would go after companies like Amway.

And then they wanted to loosen regulations and lower certain taxes that would free up cash for super rich people and corporations, and that was supposed to trickle down to us normals.

Guess who loves fewer regulations and no consumer protection bureau and lower taxes and all that jazz?

Rich guys who own MLMs.

In the end, the plan was a disaster, if you ask my parents.

Maybe your parents made out like bandits in the 80s.

It did help rich people stay or get richer.

while the rest of us went into debt, along with the country, which tripled its deficit during Reagan's presidency.

So back to Amway.

Amway.

During this time, Dick DeVos was the finance chair of the RNC.

Until he wasn't.

There have been a few things that I've either read or seen that I find really funny.

And one of them was a post article.

And it was talking about when DeVos was actually kicked off from being the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

And it was quoting people as saying that he was starting to run the finance meetings almost and they started sounding like AMWE opportunity meetings.

DeVos, which in Dutch means the fox, he was kicked off as finance chairman because of the way he was running it, like an Amway

meeting and sort of extorting people.

There's a way to ask for money, you know, there is a protocol for asking for money.

Okay, so he's out at the RNC.

But if you thought that was the end of DeVos's political ambitions, think again.

Far more frightening than a couple of old guys at an RNC meeting getting freaked out by some rah-rah Amway bullshit.

In 1987, about six years too late and with 50,000 people that we knew of already infected with the disease, President Reagan convened the President's Commission on the HIV epidemic.

And guess who got himself put on that board?

Dick DeVos, the federally indicted soap hustler.

And in classic MLM fashion, he put the blame for the AIDS crisis where his worldview dictated it belonged, on the victims.

You know, when HIV first came out, President Reagan formed a commission.

I was honored to be on that commission.

I listened to 300 witnesses tell us that it was everybody else's fault but their own.

Nothing to do with their contact.

It was just the government didn't.

fix his disease.

At the end of that, I put into the document that was the the conclusion document from the commission that actions have consequences and you are responsible for yours.

What was that about?

I mean, again, he was a puritanical Dutch Reform religious zealot himself, but he was also a huge contributor to the Reagan administration campaign.

So even people at the top ranks of the Republican Party said there's something wrong with this way this guy operates.

And then

the big contribution he makes to the Reagan administration is what has been described as a cruel contribution to that AIDS dialogue.

Amway's next significant contribution came in helping Reagan's successor into office, George H.W.

Bush.

You could have guessed that he was pals with these Amway guys, right?

In helping him get elected through enormous campaign contributions, they earned yet another ally in the Oval Office.

Well, thank you, Dick DeVos,

Dick Johnson,

Dick DeVos, thank you for that very warm and generous welcome, and thank all of you for that welcome.

You sure know how to make a fella feel a part of the Amway family.

Amway, an extraordinary company, has brought us together here today.

I'm surrounded here by 35 or 40,000 examples examples of the great system of free enterprise where anyone can grab hold of their dream and work hard and believe hard and make it come true.

And that's what you're doing, and that's what Amway has inspired you to do.

Keep up the great work and may God bless you all.

Thank you very much.

And then Bill Clinton is selected.

During the Bush years, it was business as usual.

Very few MLMs were looked into by the FTC, and it seemed like Amway's effort to keep a friendly in office was paying off.

You would think that since the founders of Amway had been in such a great position of influence and gave so much money to the Republican Party over the years, that the Clintons might have offered some sort of relief or hope to people like Robert and the rest of the 10 people who were like Robert and trying to protect our citizens from multi-level marketing.

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When Clinton was elected, of course, the threat to multi-level marketing re-emerged.

The fear that a Democrat who has not received the kind of political support from multilevel marketing because the multilevel marketing lobby had been focused on the Republican Party might resurrect the old policies of investigating multilevel marketing as illegal pyramid schemes.

In many ways, Clinton was not focused on protecting the public from these kinds of consumer frauds.

He brought in the same man who had written the Amway decision for the Federal Trade Commission, Robert Potofsky.

Robert Potofsky.

That's the same guy who ignored all of Joe's evidence intended to prove Amway was a pyramid scheme.

That guy.

He made him the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

And under Petovsky, more prosecutions occurred, but they were always of small companies.

And in each case, the FTC would assert multi-level marketing as a model was legal.

Clinton himself later became a spokesman for and publicized a video that was done for the Direct Selling Association promoting direct selling as a great business and promoting it internationally.

So what's the Direct Selling Association?

Well, it's the lobbying arm of the multi-level marketing industry, counting, among others, Amway as a member in good standing to this day.

You would think that the industry, since they're running the Chamber of Commerce and everything, would have been all all set with their lobbies, but no.

Bill Clinton gave a talk on behalf of the DSA in a video with a very presidential-looking background.

I'm not saying it was filmed in the Oval Office, but if you told me it was filmed in the Oval Office, I would believe it was filmed in the Oval Office.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to talk to so many of the salespeople who help our economy grow.

and help keep the American dream alive for millions of Americans.

In America, if you work hard and play by the rules, if you take responsibility for for yourself and your family, you should have all the opportunity you need for a better future.

That's America's basic bargain.

It's what I work to promote as president, and it's what the work of direct selling helps to promote each and every day.

Thank you for your work.

God bless you, and God bless America.

He himself also later made a speech at an Amway conference in Osaka, Japan, and received a fee of $700,000.

One speech.

There will be more opportunities to try to figure out how to bring women into the workforce in a way in terms of full equality and that's a place that helps rich as well as poor countries.

I am very grateful for Amway's commitment on this.

I appreciate what this company does for children.

in the United States and how much I appreciate what they do.

Now later we discover that several people in the Clinton administration became avid, active promoters of multi-level marketing.

Take for example Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who became a shill for Herbalife during her tenure in his cabinet.

She made $10 million hyping up their nutritional supplements in videos and at events.

I didn't really think there was an Illuminati before, but now I'm like, maybe there's an Illuminati?

The part that I like about what you do with Herbal Life is women are very good at interpersonal relations and of really developing

a relationship with the person that they're dealing with.

And I think that

the kind of sales operation that Herbal Life has is the one that really allows women to shine in terms of explaining and good about family health and nutrition.

That's kind of what women do on a daily basis.

And so I think they are a very natural sales force for you.

There was a lot happening during the Clinton years that were as important to AMWA and to multi-level marketing as preventing law enforcement.

And this was to get an opening into China.

China, of course, became the mother load.

It was the most important of the markets to get to eventually.

The multi-level marketing model, if it doesn't expand into other geographic areas, it will eventually begin decline, sometimes rapid decline.

It's not that other companies who are not pyramids don't want to grow, but they are not under a mandate by their business model.

The business model is sustainable.

There are repeat customers.

There are stable businesses that even if they don't grow, the company is still in business, profitable.

At any rate, the Chinese government shut it down in 98.

And immediately, Clinton's trade representative, a woman named Charlene Barszzewski, went to bat for multi-level marketing and worked with the government to allow the larger multilevel marketing companies.

And that translated almost entirely to Amway.

So basically, Charlene Barszewski managed to get the government to allow it to operate under some restricted conditions while it fashioned this new law.

The government, quite rightly, needed to crack down on these

schemes, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, whatever you want to call them.

The term they use in China is chain selling.

In cracking down on them,

they have

also forced all direct selling companies to shut down.

The fact that Barszewski is here this week, that Metal and Albright is here next week, that Bill Clinton will be here in June,

gives us a unique opportunity to gain an audience with the highest levels of government concerning the differences, and we hope to take advantage of that, to do the education that we have to do to

make them draw the distinctions between our form of selling and that which is fraudulent.

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Okay, so now is when we get to hear about how the owners of Amway, ever the opportunists, start giving a lot of money to the Democratic Party, right?

Wrong.

While accepting all the help they could get from the left, they found their ideals matched much more closely with folks on the right and kept their eyes on the larger goal of getting a Republican back into the White House.

Between 91 and 97, The watchdog group Common Cause had found that the Republican National Committee had received over $4 million, and this again in dollars that haven't suffered from the inflation we have today, from the Amway Corporation.

Richard DeVos and his wife were writing checks for a half a million each to the Republican Party.

Amway didn't just help the first Bush get elected, no, they helped his kid too.

Shishi, Shi.

I want to thank the leaders of Amway China

for contributing to causes

that make the communities in which you live a better place.

So Bush comes in

in 2000 and goes to 2008, you won't see prosecutions.

As opposed to even going after the smaller ones?

Correct.

It just wasn't there.

That's right.

In addition to campaign contributions, Amway also did this weekly enormous conference call thing, where their distributors regularly called in for encouragement and inspiration.

And then during this time, they also got to hear about the most Amway-friendly presidential candidate, George W.

Bush.

And then Bush goes and appoints one of Amway's former lawyers to chair the FTC, Timothy Murris.

Tim then goes and appoints, as the FTC's chief economist, his pal, David Schuffman, who was a consultant to the MLM industry, specifically for a company called Equinox that had been under investigation by the FTC during the Clinton years.

So here's a guy that had been testifying against the FTC on behalf of a multi-level marketing company.

And a year later, not even a year later, he's made the FTC's chief economist.

Not only did the commission get infiltrated by former friendlies of the MLM industry, as people left positions at the FTC around this time, a lot of them ran directly into the warm embrace of the corporate ranks at Amway and other MLMs.

Of course, Bush had to leave eventually, and at this point, the country decided it was time for someone different.

Someone seemingly incorruptible.

Someone that offered everyone a chance to feel something new.

A feeling that, in the case of MLMs, would turn out to be dangerous.

That feeling was hope.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there

who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,

who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time.

Who still questions the power power of our democracy?

Tonight is your answer.

When Obama came in, there was tremendous hope among consumer activists who were paying attention to this that surely the Obama administration would take the handcuffs off the FTC.

The hope was truly raised.

Of course, that was Obama's theme, wasn't it?

But strangely, nothing happened.

First four years, nothing happened.

We already saw during the Clinton years that the multi-level marketing industry had strongly infiltrated Congress, had bipartisan support, was pouring money in from various avenues to individuals, to political parties.

And I think Obama, much like Clinton, decided this was not an issue he was going to take on.

As you might remember, Obama had a lot on his plate.

A couple of wars, a major financial crisis.

When he came into office, MLMs weren't going to be at the top of his list.

But if the administration thought that they could ignore the industry forever, by the start of the second term, that idea was gone.

All of a sudden, an explosion occurred during the Obama administration.

A hedge fund came out and announced that it was betting a billion dollars against the stock of a major multi-level marketing company on the basis that it believed the company was an illegal pyramid scheme, a fraud.

So this brought public attention to multi-level marketing on a scale as never before.

Herbalife is a company that sells nutritional supplements and weight loss products through a network of 3.1 million salespeople.

Thanks to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, Herbalife is currently fighting for its life.

Bill Ackman recently raised questions about the company's accounting practices and the stock quickly lost more than 30% of its value.

Thanks for coming in today, Bill.

Sure.

First of all, what are you accusing Herbalife of?

Of being a pyramid skin.

We believe Herbalife is a pyramid skin.

When the FTC finally did come to a conclusion about Herbalife, it announced a settlement with Herbalife.

It announced also that the person who had been negotiating for Herbalife against the FTC

was

John Leibowitz, who had just left the FTC as chairman and had gone straight to work for Herbalife.

And he was negotiating with the FTC on behalf of Herbalife.

And that settlement, most famously, named all the wrongdoings of Herbalife, but refused to call Herbalife a pyramid scheme.

Again, the core facts that

we've alleged and that we consider to be problematic with their compensation structure are set forth in detail in our complaint.

And again, I will leave to readers to draw their own conclusions, but they were not determined not to have been a pyramid.

That would be inaccurate.

This was a sweetheart deal, and it resulted in Herbalife escaping the wrath of Wall Street.

Its stock value went up, wiping out the short seller, wiping out Bill Ackman, causing him to abandon his position eventually.

And this is after two years of investigation and four years of publicized exposures by the Wall Street Hedge Fund.

And then we see really what was behind it.

The FTC itself, that is its former chairman, was representing Herbalife during all this time.

And when the settlement was made, Herbalife announced that he would then be given a formal position as an advisor to the board.

In other words, he had an official position, which prior to that, none of us knew that Leibowitz was working for Herbalife.

The multi-level marketing industry has one single

need from government.

They don't really need lifting of regulations.

They don't need environmental rules relaxed, and they don't even need favorable tax breaks any more than other companies.

So there's nothing particular there.

But they have one existential need,

and that is to prevent fraud prosecution, either civil or criminal.

They have largely prevented criminal prosecutions.

You haven't really seen a significant threat.

It's always there

because fraud laws are on the books and would never be taken away.

Then there's the potential for civil actions as a pyramid scheme.

This doesn't threaten anyone with jail time, but it could potentially shut down a company.

And it can also lead to court precedents, that is judgments from the court that could encourage future lawsuits.

They have a great need to prevent the government from establishing any kind of precedent or policy or generating any kind of judicial decisions that would expose them to charges that they are operating pyramid schemes.

The Herbalife case didn't cause the industry to come crashing down as much as people hoped it would.

In similar fashion to big banks on Wall Street after the markets crashed, Herbalife used its sizable resources to maneuver around many of the settlement terms and stay in business.

But there was one significant victory of sorts.

Edith Ramirez, the chairman of the FTC at the time, argued that for an MLM to be considered legal, its profits must be reaped from sales to end users who are not already involved in the scheme.

In other words, supply and demand would decide who made money, not advancing up the rungs through recruitment or quotas.

Of course, the industry was not pleased with this notion and has been working tirelessly ever since to get legislation passed that would protect them from law enforcement on the issue.

Every few years it goes by a different name, but H.R.

3409 is the current iteration of the Anti-Pyramid Scheme Bill.

No, it's not a bill that shuts down pyramid schemes, but one that is being pushed by the Direct Selling Association and MLM-friendly politicians to essentially protect MLMs from being called pyramid schemes.

More on that next week.

And they're lobbying for the passage of that bill with the industry's most MLM-friendly president yet in office.

The Trump name and success have really become one and the same.

I've worked hard at that for a long time.

The two things I've mastered over the years is understanding the importance of timing in business and the ability to recognize great opportunities and also great people.

So, I'm here to tell you about a company that provides these two essential components for success.

That's the Donald Donald in a promotional video for ACN, an MLM that sold landline video phones this century after everyone had like laptops and Skype and everything.

ACN is one of two MLMs the Trump family has very close ties with, including one called the Trump Network.

Their ties are so close that he and his family are currently being sued in the Southern District of New York by some former distributors for allegedly defrauding them and others out of millions of dollars.

Trump and his family, they say, encouraged thousands of people through these videos and personal appearances and endorsements on his TV show The Apprentice to invest bigly in these amazing, tremendous business opportunities.

To my right are Greg and Tony from ACN who will tell you what to do.

We're very excited to be here to have you help us introduce to the world the new ACN video phone.

Your task is to launch this product to hundreds of ACN representatives.

500 salespeople from ACN are going to be judging you.

It wasn't even close.

The men absolutely easily defeated the women.

Claudia, I believe you have an amazing future.

I think you're totally beautiful.

You're going to be a big star.

But I'm sorry, Claudia, you're fired.

Oh, and one more thing.

Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of the founder of Amway, is a high-ranking member of his cabinet.

which gives her a seat at the table that would make her father-in-law pretty jealous if he weren't dead.

Mrs.

Devas, there is a growing fear, I think, in this country that we are moving toward what some would call an oligarchic form of society, where a small number of very, very wealthy billionaires control, to a significant degree, our economic and political life.

Would you be so kind as to tell us how much money your family has contributed to the Republican Party over the years?

Senator, first of all, thank you for that question.

I'm, again, was pleased to meet you in your office last week.

I wish I could give you that number.

I don't know.

I have heard the number was 200 million.

Does that sound in the ballpark?

Collectively, between

the entire family?

That's possible.

Okay.

My question is, and I don't mean to be rude, but do you think if you were not a multi-billionaire,

if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions the republican party that you would be sitting here today

um senator as a matter of fact i do think that there would be that possibility i don't

next time on the season finale of the dream how did you feel when you read that um i'm i'm surprised honestly i'm not surprised that she didn't answer specific questions that we sent because that's been the response we've been getting from everyone.

So I wasn't surprised that she was ignoring the factual questions.

I was surprised, though, that her suggestion was that we should have collaborated with her from the beginning

before we started production on the show so that we would have had her perspective going into our research, which is obviously an ethical.

Well, yeah, you don't want the person you're investigating to be holding your hand through the investigation.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Well, I'm glad you're here.

I'm incredibly nervous to talk to you.

Well, somehow I I don't believe that.

I am.

No, I really am.

I'm worried.

I'm worried that you're going to lie to me.

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported by me, Jane Marie, Dan Gallucci, Mackenzie Kassab, Lyra Smith, and help from Claire Rawlinson.

We are edited by Peter Clowney.

Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris, and we're mixed by Mike Richter.

The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayer, Chris Bannon, Dan Gallucci, and me.

Special thanks to Robert Fitzpatrick, who's currently working on a new book, Ponzinomics, The Untold History of Multilevel Marketing.

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