S1 E1: Wanna Swim in Cash?

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Speaker 32 Hey, dream listeners. If you like this podcast, you're going to love the book.
Yeah, I wrote a book. It's called Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March 12th, 2024.
on Atria.

Speaker 32 It's about all of your favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of. I hope.
Check it out.

Speaker 32 Pretend I'm somebody that you've just met and I seem like.

Speaker 35 Oh, you mean what's this pitch?

Speaker 32 What's the sales?

Speaker 32 Give me the pitch. Oh, well,

Speaker 35 come on. You know, you can give me $1,500 and in a week you can walk away with $12,000.
You know, we have endless resources.

Speaker 35 I've got a list of people that even if you don't know them, I know them and you can call them. And all you have to do is be positive and they will get it from you.
Come on, you can do this.

Speaker 35 I know you. You're a great salesperson.

Speaker 35 I trust you. I believe in you.
And I'd like to share this opportunity with you. You know, this is, don't give me your last $1,500.

Speaker 35 But if you've got $1,500 that's kicking around, that you're thinking about what should I do with it, do this.

Speaker 35 Do this. Yeah.

Speaker 35 I did it.

Speaker 32 I'm in.

Speaker 35 Yeah, you're in.

Speaker 35 I know you're in.

Speaker 32 I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream, episode one.

Speaker 32 Want to swim in cash?

Speaker 32 When we first started making this show, we were super pumped, jazzed. But we had to keep the topic under wraps for as long as possible.

Speaker 32 The subjects of our investigation are highly litigious, for one thing, and we had to get close, inside how they work, without them freaking out and closing ranks.

Speaker 32 That was touchy enough, but then there's this other thing. Half of my family and most of my friends from my hometown are involved, directly, intimately.
And we're going to bring you into their world.

Speaker 32 It's sketchy and crazy making and almost unbelievable. Anyway, it was frustrating this not being able to talk about it thing.
Like I said, I was super pumped and I talk a lot.

Speaker 32 One night, I let it slip to one of my best friends that we'd gotten a new gig. The exchange went like this: All I can say is that it's kind of about pyramid schemes.

Speaker 32 And he goes, Oh,

Speaker 32 you should talk to my mom. What?

Speaker 32 Yeah, my mom ran one of those when I was a kid out of our house. A literal pyramid scheme.

Speaker 35 Picture this loft. There is a 16-foot high, 22-foot-wide

Speaker 35 window overlooking the World Trade Center.

Speaker 32 Ladies and gentlemen, my friend's mom, Nan Dillon.

Speaker 35 So it's got white pickled floors, a 16-foot ceiling, and 3,500 square feet.

Speaker 35 It is jammed. Hundreds of people showed up.

Speaker 32 You can't even walk.

Speaker 35 There are so many people. In order to not be suffocated by the crowd, I climbed up the spiral staircase going to the second floor just to observe.

Speaker 35 And I remember just kind of sitting on that staircase overlooking this crowd of people as they moved around the room making alliances, you know, creating future

Speaker 32 groups.

Speaker 32 Back in the 80s, Nan was working in advertising and raising her three kids in Manhattan.

Speaker 35 I was only just, you know, newly unmarried and just kind of coming back into the world. It was kind of an exciting time for me that, you know, life is new.

Speaker 35 I'm feeling very empowered and on a personal basis, filled with an idea that I was smart and adventurous and I could do anything I wanted to do and that life was just an adventure.

Speaker 32 The timing of Nan's rebirth, if you will, couldn't have been better. See, at that exact moment, a cultural phenomenon was taking hold in New Agey circles all over the country.

Speaker 32 It was called the human potential movement. Think of it as sort of a precursor to the secret.
You know, just visualize abundance and happiness and voila, you're rich and skinny or whatever.

Speaker 35 In that time in New York City, there was a lot of human potential movement groups kind of. It was all about energy.
You know, energy out is energy in.

Speaker 35 And you get what you give and all of that, you know, power of positive whatever.

Speaker 32 In the midst of this movement sits an untethered man

Speaker 32 riding this new wave of endless opportunity.

Speaker 35 And along comes this exciting concept where if

Speaker 35 you put a bunch of money in and you could talk other people into joining you, that everybody could make a lot of money and it was all cash and it was all fast and it was all fun and very optimistic and exciting.

Speaker 32 This new thing was presented as a game called the airplane game. As Nan remembers it, anyone who was even tangentially related to the whole human potential movement was a buzz about the airplane game.

Speaker 32 Parties introducing it to newcomers were being held all over Lower Manhattan.

Speaker 32 The way she describes it, they looked kind of like literary salons with people giving inspiring lectures at their bohemian flats in the East Village and a bunch of aging hippies sitting around cross-legged, wrapped with attention.

Speaker 35 There were stories about these people who had come from California, who took up residence in some lecture hall in the East Village, and these people were giving lectures on the new way of, you know, making money while stepping aside from the

Speaker 35 establishment.

Speaker 32 It took a minute, but being in that world, eventually Nan agreed to attend one of these meetups and to learn more about this exciting opportunity.

Speaker 35 The first time I remember asking somebody, well, wait a second, how does this thing work? I was trying to understand it. He said, well, there's a pilot and there's two co-pilots and there are

Speaker 35 passengers and you pay to fly.

Speaker 32 These were obviously not literal airplanes. Picture this.
People would set up chairs in the shape of a triangle or pyramid with one chair at the front. That's the pilot seat.

Speaker 32 Behind that person, there were two chairs for co-pilots, four crew behind them, and eight passengers in the last row. Those eight passengers were the new recruits who put in $1,500 apiece.

Speaker 32 As they recruited more people, they moved up the ranks until eventually they became a pilot themselves and took the pot. Then they moved on to another airplane.

Speaker 32 The chairs weren't absolutely necessary. Sometimes these planes were just represented by charts, but the principle was the same.

Speaker 35 So it's this revolving thing of you pay and then you wait and then everything moves very quickly.

Speaker 35 And you are, before you know it, like we're talking about four days,

Speaker 35 you are a pilot and people are paying you.

Speaker 35 I can't remember some of the timing of this, but I did say yes to having a recruitment party at my loft in Tribeca.

Speaker 35 Somebody planned it, called me and said, okay, if we come to your place.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 35 it was at that event that I started to think, oh, this is like, this is getting out of hand. It was extraordinary and giddy making.

Speaker 35 I mean, it was really intoxicating and fun Until somebody leaned up to me and said, I think there are some FBI men in the room.

Speaker 32 I went, oh, far out. Is it really?

Speaker 32 This interview with Nan was, to use her words, giddy making. Naturally, I come out of the studio and start telling all the other producers on our team about this airplane game.

Speaker 32 And that's when one of them says that the airplane game had come up in their their reporting too.

Speaker 32 It turns out one of our experts, a guy named Robert Fitzpatrick, you'll hear a lot from him this season, he got his start in studying this sort of thing because he had played the airplane game too.

Speaker 34 I think it was a telephone call, yes, and it was an invitation to come to a meeting that was going to be held in someone's house. It was presented as just

Speaker 34 something new, a movement, an event. It was quite vague as to what it was.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 34 like thousands of others, I was invited to participate.

Speaker 32 When the airplane game reached Robert Fitzpatrick in Broward County, Florida, he was a perfect fit. Robert was a self-starter, founded his own trade magazine, and worked as a community organizer.

Speaker 32 He got invited to play, and the party he went to was just as exhilarating as Nan's. But there was something more to it, something sweet, neighborly, wholesome even.

Speaker 34 When you went in, there was an immediate sentiment of feeling, an air of happiness, euphoria, welcoming.

Speaker 34 There was excitement. There was a speaker.
People were reminded of their own goals and their hopes for a better life.

Speaker 34 And it was presented as a kind of

Speaker 34 system that enabled people to achieve their life's purpose.

Speaker 32 Like Nan, Robert and his friends were heavily influenced by the human potential movement. And the airplane game, to them, it just seemed like a logical extension of that way of thinking.

Speaker 34 I myself, at that time,

Speaker 34 had

Speaker 34 been interested in personal development, transformational types of programs. This was the 80s.
This was in the air.

Speaker 32 There's a certain type of person who was already fantasizing about their airplane game strategy. Like with spreadsheets and charts and party plans and a vision board.
Nan was one of those people.

Speaker 35 So I take two weeks off of work and put my, what I called my flight plans up on the wall and go to work.

Speaker 34 It's $1,500 to join, but it's not a fee. It's a kind of a contribution.
It's what you'd put into it. And it's all based on giving and receiving.
It's sharing. It's non-competitive.

Speaker 35 You pay and then you wait and then everything moves very quickly

Speaker 35 and you are before you know it, like we're talking about four days,

Speaker 35 you are a pilot and people are paying you.

Speaker 32 If you're wondering, $1,500 back then would be like $3,500 today. So imagine a stream of people walking up and handing you three or four grand.
That adds up fast.

Speaker 32 And Nan was told everyone who enters the game could walk away with $12,000.

Speaker 32 Again, that'd be like getting almost 30 grand for going to a party.

Speaker 34 That number absolutely sent a current of electricity through the room. The idea that someone whom you knew and trusted had received $12,000 in a matter of days,

Speaker 34 it somehow clicked.

Speaker 32 that this was correct.

Speaker 34 This is the way it ought to work. That thinking correctly in America is supposed to lead to prosperity.

Speaker 34 And there is a whole current of thinking like this, which I had been subjected to, and virtually everybody had been subjected to, but particularly people who had studied this kind of new thought philosophy: that positive attitude, confidence, and right thinking attracted to you

Speaker 34 good things.

Speaker 34 There's enough for everybody.

Speaker 34 Scarcity is an illusion. And that is that kind of competitive, scarcity-based thinking that has held everyone back, and that this system breaks through that.

Speaker 35 I mean, sales is what I did. So I was able to attract a lot of people.
And I had been in seminars with people. I had been been in all of these different groups with people.

Speaker 35 So I had a huge roster of people that I knew that I could call upon and people

Speaker 35 who had enough exposure to me to be able to trust me.

Speaker 34 Initially, the people that were joining were those who really were oriented to that kind of thinking.

Speaker 35 I considered myself kind of wily, you know, like one of the first in Tribeca, you know, managed to wheedle my way into a 3,500 square foot loft that I paid $700 a month for.

Speaker 32 If you're the type of person who moved into a 3,500 square foot loft in Tribeca in 1987, then you're probably also the type of person who'd have no problem figuring out how to get the most out of this game.

Speaker 32 You, like Nan, would be raking it in.

Speaker 34 Some others got up and said not only had they received that, they had re-entered it as a passenger and gone through the process again and received another $12,000. So these were testimonials that now

Speaker 34 the mechanism, the math of this, the structure

Speaker 34 sort of went into the background.

Speaker 35 Every time I made money, I would buy into another plane. I mean, what the heck? You pay $1,500 and make $12,000.
I can be in five or six planes all at the the same time, which is what I did.

Speaker 35 I was able to attract a lot of people and the money started to flow immediately. The kids used to gather around the bed as I would just, you know,

Speaker 35 laugh and invite them to jump into the cash that was all over the bed.

Speaker 32 You know, it was just hilariously fun.

Speaker 35 I mean, at that point, there had to be 30 or 40, maybe $50,000.

Speaker 35 Like in, you know, $100 bills or something. It was just crazy.
You know, it wasn't that there was so much money, but it was all cash. And it was like mountains of cash.

Speaker 35 And that was, that was the scene that arrived with me.

Speaker 35 Hey, kids, you want to swim in cash? You know, come on into mommy's room and let's all let's all swim in cash.

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Speaker 9 Medicate's 30% off Black Friday sale is happening now through Tuesday, December 2nd.

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Speaker 32 These piles of cash, they were coming from somewhere.

Speaker 32 And while Nan's passengers were more or less acquaintances with money to play with, Robert's community in South Florida was made up of friends and family.

Speaker 34 At some level, we knew that if we said this to someone we didn't know, if we couldn't leverage the trust and relationship we already had, it would probably sound bizarre. It would sound

Speaker 34 commercial.

Speaker 34 It would sound crass.

Speaker 34 But if I know you, it can suddenly transform into

Speaker 34 something in which I am giving. It's something that you would share intimately almost.

Speaker 34 And that took the commercial edge off of it, even though what was it all about? $1,500 turning into $12,000, 800% return.

Speaker 35 You know, it didn't take much to know that that was ridiculous.

Speaker 35 But, you know, I knew

Speaker 35 it was trappings for a Ponzi scheme. I just didn't care.

Speaker 35 Eventually, there will be a peasant in Bangladesh who

Speaker 35 can't come up with the money

Speaker 35 and the game will die. I knew that.

Speaker 32 Okay,

Speaker 32 where were we?

Speaker 32 While Naon was swimming in cash, Scrooge McDuck style with her kids, Robert's back in Florida, watching his neighbors and friends get hooked on this new game.

Speaker 34 I lived in South Florida around 1986, and the airplane game arrived, and it exploded. It just became a sort of mania.

Speaker 34 People were smiling. There were a lot of familiar faces there,

Speaker 34 people that I knew.

Speaker 34 They looked like me. They were dressed like me, many professionals.

Speaker 34 looked very familiar, very safe, very comfortable. And remember, there was no product.
This was not not a business. It was not a church.
It was part of a philosophy. It was a story.

Speaker 34 You used an assumed philosophical name, courage, commitment,

Speaker 34 fanciful names like this. I was invited by someone I knew and trusted.
I was in a home of someone that was a mutual friend. There were plenty of people there I knew.

Speaker 34 There was a feeling of excitement. There was nothing about it that initially made me think of it as in any way illegal, fraudulent, unethical.

Speaker 35 The people that I knew and the people that I could call on were these kind of superficial liaisons that I had created by participating in these human potential movement groups.

Speaker 35 You may know their deepest, darkest secrets, but

Speaker 35 strangely enough,

Speaker 35 it didn't make them them your friend. You could walk away from any one of them and never miss anybody.

Speaker 32 For Robert, this whole thing was way more complicated. It hit a lot closer to home.

Speaker 34 Leveraging trust was a key element.

Speaker 34 One of the people

Speaker 34 that I approached was the person I later married.

Speaker 34 So that's how close it got.

Speaker 35 The money started to flow immediately. I did not think about the people who would be losing.
I figured, hey, lots of people to go through.

Speaker 35 If they can keep the faith and keep the energy high, yes, of course people will lose. I knew that.
But it seemed very, very far away to me.

Speaker 35 And of course, at that point in time, everybody was not telling themselves that this was illegal.

Speaker 35 They were telling themselves that the feds don't like it because there's no tax being paid and they want in. That was the attitude.
It wasn't, you know, we're doing criminal activity.

Speaker 35 It was like, you know,

Speaker 35 screw them. You know, we're doing this on the side and we are making up our own rules and

Speaker 35 everybody is a willing partner here. What's the problem?

Speaker 35 What we did decide early on

Speaker 35 was that the reason that anything could be problematic was if there was money paid, but no services rendered or no product sold.

Speaker 35 So we decided that what you needed to do was give something for the money. So what we did was

Speaker 35 we would present roses.

Speaker 35 I guess in our minds we thought, well, that's that. We have the feds fooled.
So when people came in and delivered money in big fat envelopes, I would present them with a rose.

Speaker 32 So they were buying my flower.

Speaker 35 It was a $1,500 rose. Yes, a very, very special rose.

Speaker 35 I have this image of, you know, being in the middle of my busy day in the advertising agency where I was working and having the receptionist call back to say that Vladimir,

Speaker 35 you know, was in the, was in the waiting room. And did I want to see him? They didn't have any idea who he was.
And I was saying, absolutely.

Speaker 35 Just reaching for one of my roses out of the bouquet that I would buy every day to bring to work and go out to the receptionist and present this guy with a rose,

Speaker 35 a very expensive rose.

Speaker 35 You know, I'm a grown-up. I know what a Ponzi scheme is when I hear one.
I said, oh, I'm far out.

Speaker 35 So I know what that is. But no, I didn't care.

Speaker 35 There were some other kind of of hard to convince people and I found myself suddenly with this sale not being quite as easy as it was in the beginning. We had our attention on winning.

Speaker 35 We didn't have any attention on losing.

Speaker 35 And then the problem happened.

Speaker 32 There's this concept in pyramid schemes or Ponzi schemes. It's called the endless chain.
It posits that the supply of people coming in on the bottom tier is infinite.

Speaker 32 You'll never run out of new recruits. It's a foundational idea and without it, the whole thing collapses.

Speaker 32 And of course, unless you eventually start recruiting babies or something, it's a completely false premise, especially with a scheme that moves as quickly as the airplane game.

Speaker 32 It doesn't take long to run out of people who have an extra 1500 bucks lying around.

Speaker 35 The people that we were recruiting were no longer on the high achievement level of the first people who had gotten in.

Speaker 35 So they didn't have the energy, they didn't have the optimism, and they didn't have the sales ability to sell

Speaker 35 their planes.

Speaker 35 And now

Speaker 35 it started to look hard to these people.

Speaker 35 And they started to see, oh my God, maybe I'll just lose my money.

Speaker 35 I can't do this.

Speaker 34 As it progressed, we began noticing that some of the people coming in, they looked aggressive.

Speaker 34 They looked, well, greedy, they looked opportunistic, and they didn't seem to reflect the language anymore. They just saw it as a chance to make money.
There were doubts that had begun to enter.

Speaker 34 The type of people coming in, that certain people would warn you. The word pyramid scheme was uttered by some people.
There was a sense that it might not last forever.

Speaker 34 These were doubts that were introduced. But still, these were banished, put aside.
And then an article appeared in the local newspaper.

Speaker 32 Someone at the local paper had caught wind of a potential fraud going on around town. And do you know who reads the paper in the late 80s in Broward County, Florida? Everyone.

Speaker 32 The

Speaker 34 County Sheriff's Department had gotten word of this and considered it an illegal pyramid scheme and warned people against it. And this was followed by arrests.

Speaker 34 The Sheriff's Department raided some of these house meetings and arrested people, handcuffed them, and took them away.

Speaker 34 Remember, this entire thing is a grassroots phenomenon. There were people that had started it.
There were a few people that had manipulated it at the beginning who made tens of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 34 But it had no official structure.

Speaker 34 They got word about a house meeting, they went there, and they arrested whoever was at the front of the room making the presentation, who may have been a very low-level person, actually, as the scheme had already gotten into tens of thousands of people's lives by that point.

Speaker 34 The newspaper accounts the next day reported these arrests. And now they were saying things like, and these people use assumed names.
They pay in cash. They expect an 800% return.

Speaker 34 It's done personally without using the mail to avoid mail and wire fraud charges. All of a sudden, these elements of the program that we considered innocent

Speaker 34 were depicted as maneuvers to evade the law.

Speaker 34 And the whole thing looked, in the context of the article, as a crass, ridiculous, absurd program of dim-witted people who didn't even understand that they were being duped into a fraud.

Speaker 34 When we saw it in black and white, of course, the element of being arrested sent terrible fear through everyone,

Speaker 34 through the communities, because now your friendship suddenly became a liability.

Speaker 34 And people began now to avoid each other. frightened that someone would blow the whistle on you, you might be reported.

Speaker 34 So what had become this wonderful wonderful bond bringing so many people together in which private, intimate, personal, collegial relationships had actually been commercialized, but in the language of a philosophy that almost denied the element of commercialism, those same relationships now became threats.

Speaker 34 Now, also,

Speaker 34 people who had given money might want it back.

Speaker 34 And so there was this element, too, of now debt and obligation. So the whole thing became quite nightmarish at that point.

Speaker 32 And that's where things ended for Robert. Nan's reasons for quitting the game weren't quite as dire, but they do help explain some fundamentally flawed aspects of this, quote, business model.

Speaker 35 I had a guy who I knew I shouldn't have recruited. He was just too much of a downer.

Speaker 35 He was a guy who always thought that the other guy was getting something that he wasn't getting. He was not an empowered person.
I made a mistake.

Speaker 35 The top people, the energetic people that I knew had jumped, and now we were getting down to them,

Speaker 35 the people who,

Speaker 35 against your better judgment, you said yes to.

Speaker 35 Yeah, greed takes over and you try to, you know, you don't always follow your intuition when somebody's waving money at you. You just say, all right.

Speaker 35 I knew that this guy was borderline, but I thought, well, I'll help him and maybe he'll do okay. And maybe this will be fine.
Well, he didn't do okay. And he started to complain.
This is too hard.

Speaker 35 I can't find anybody.

Speaker 35 Don't you realize that this is a Ponzi scheme and that somebody really has to lose? I think I'm going to be one of the people that loses. My lawyer is saying this is illegal.

Speaker 35 And I'm going, oh my God, oh my God, listen to this. I accepted a check from him.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 35 I didn't even bother cashing the check.

Speaker 32 This is how blase I was.

Speaker 35 I mean, I was really guilty of hubris. I had endorsed the check in the back and written it over to my kids' school for

Speaker 35 payment of tuition. I thought I was just saving a step.
So now he had written proof that he had given me this money for no reason at all.

Speaker 35 And now his lawyer was saying that he could make big trouble for me. So I said, oops.
And I suddenly realized that this might be the end of this game.

Speaker 35 So he called me up and started threatening me with all of his stuff in his whining, complaining,

Speaker 35 loser way.

Speaker 35 So I said, okay, I get it. You know, I can meet you, you know, in half an hour and I'll give you every cent that you've given me, I'm going to give you back.

Speaker 35 And in exchange, you'll just make this go away.

Speaker 35 It didn't cost me anything really to get rid of him. And I knew that he was so

Speaker 35 fragile that if I didn't do this, that I could have real problems. So I did it.
I mean, it took me five minutes to tell him, you got it, you know, you've got your money back. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 35 So I met this guy in the corner, gave him his money. He ripped up whatever record he had of the check and, you know, gave me his word that it was over.
We shook hands and had a big hug.

Speaker 35 And I went back and ripped the plans off the wall. And I said, you know, it's over.
We're done.

Speaker 35 Went back to work the next day.

Speaker 35 That was that.

Speaker 36 Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case for your phone. Most of the time, you'll probably be fine, but all it takes is one drop.

Speaker 36 And you'll wish you spent those extra few dollars on a case. ExpressVPN VPN is super secure.
I use it on programs that I make that could maybe, you know, get hacked into. And it's really easy to use.

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Plans start at just $3.49 a month. That's $3.49 a month.
12 cents a day.

Speaker 36 As listeners of the dream, you know we look into politicians quite a bit and scammy things within the government. So I end up using a VPN quite a bit to do research, to contact people.

Speaker 36 It just keeps me feeling more secure with my reporting.

Speaker 36 Select plans include Identity Defender, a new suite of tools to get your data removed from data brokers, alert you when your data appears on the dark web, and even insure you against data theft for up to $1 million.

Speaker 36 Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash the dream. That's expressvpn.com dot com slash the dream to find out how you can get up to four extra months.

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Speaker 32 It's that time of year again. The holidays are coming fast.
And if your kids are anything like mine, that wish list is getting pretty long.

Speaker 32 Let's be honest, some of the things on that list make us stop and think like a smartphone. Do they actually need all that stuff to stare at? Well, no, they don't.
Just get them a gab.

Speaker 32 I got one for my kid. It has tracking, which I only look at every once in a while because I don't like to spy on her.
It has a phone number, very helpful.

Speaker 32 And it has a list of people you can text that I approve. Plus, I can spy on the text, which I don't do.
Haven't had to yet.

Speaker 32 But if something weird comes in on one of those texts, I do get a notification. And then I look and it's just some dumb YouTube makeup video that the Gab phone doesn't let you watch.

Speaker 32 So win, win, win, win, win, win. I love it.
Gab offers phones and watches made just for kids. No internet, no social media, and just the right features for their age.

Speaker 32 Kids want phones to feel independent and connected, and as parents, we want to know they're safe. With Gab, you can have both and protect them from the scary stuff.

Speaker 32 With Gab's Tech and Steps approach, kids get the right tech at the right time.

Speaker 32 From watches with GPS tracking for the youngest explorers to the perfect first phone with no internet or social media to the teen phones with parent-approved apps.

Speaker 32 So get ready for a Christmas morning they'll never forget, the one where they get their first phone. And really, it's a gift for you too, because these kids-safe phones will give you peace of mind.

Speaker 32 Visit gab.com/slash thedream and use code the dream for a special holiday offer. That's gabb.com slash the dream.
Gab, tech in steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for you.

Speaker 33 Why choose a sleep number smart bed?

Speaker 32 Can I make my site softer?

Speaker 34 Can I make my site firmer?

Speaker 32 Can we sleep cooler?

Speaker 33 Sleep number does that, cools up to eight times faster, and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your sleep number setting.
Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night.

Speaker 33 It's our Black Friday sale. Recharge this season with a bundle of cozy, soothing comfort.
Now only $17.99 for our C2 mattress and base plus free premium delivery. Prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii.

Speaker 33 Check it out at a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com today.

Speaker 3 Rediscover skin that looks as vibrant as you feel.

Speaker 2 Medicaid is a British clinical skincare brand trusted by dermatologists for visible age-defying results without compromise.

Speaker 7 And right now is the best time of the year to try it.

Speaker 8 Medicaid's 30% off during their Black Friday sale.

Speaker 10 If you've been curious about retinol, start with Medicate's Crystal Retinol Night Serum.

Speaker 15 It's award-winning, ultra-gentle, and proven to work 11 times faster than traditional retinol, smoothing wrinkles, brightening dark spots, and firming skin without irritation.

Speaker 13 Or try the fan-favorite liquid peptide serum, clinically proven to smooth fine lines in just seven days.

Speaker 18 And if you want that lifted, deeply hydrated feel, Medicate's Medicate's newest innovation, Advanced Pro Collagen Plus Peptide Cream, delivers visibly rejuvenated skin while reducing wrinkles.

Speaker 27 This is the moment to elevate your routine.

Speaker 9 Medicate's 30% off Black Friday sale is happening now through Tuesday, December 2nd.

Speaker 28 Visit medicate.us. That's M-E-D-I-K-8.us and save 30% on age-defying skincare.

Speaker 34 I didn't know what a pyramid scheme was.

Speaker 34 And if whatever I did think I knew of it, I didn't think it was something that would show up among my friends. I thought it would be a group of sleazy-looking characters wearing a lot of gold, maybe.

Speaker 34 But it wouldn't be people that had attended all these courses and

Speaker 34 were good, ethical, altruistic people.

Speaker 32 If pyramid schemes were only run by sleazy guys who would also try to sell you a Rolex out of their trench coat, we wouldn't be talking about any of this.

Speaker 32 Roping in otherwise wonderful, lovable people who you trust is crucial to making these sorts of things work.

Speaker 35 Just because I was stopping, I didn't think that it meant that anybody else was stopping. I never gave them a thought.

Speaker 35 I mean, that's probably, you know, me as a terrible person, but

Speaker 35 I did not experience that I had left anybody hanging.

Speaker 32 Okay, here's where where you get to find out what this show is really about.

Speaker 32 Remember at the beginning, I said it's kind of about pyramid schemes? It's actually about something called multi-level marketing or direct sales or network marketing.

Speaker 32 And there are a lot of companies that work this way, where you recruit someone to work under you, and then they hopefully recruit someone to work under them, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 32 And they are, legally speaking anyway, not pyramid schemes. As much as one would like to classify them this way, we're not allowed to.
Not yet.

Speaker 32 Robert Fitzpatrick is an expert in these sorts of schemes. That's why we call them in the first place, which is what made it so shocking that he had been taken in by one.

Speaker 34 Well, let us just go forward to 2008 and have people offered loans, which they did not have to show their own income, that were told the house will go up in value forever don't worry whatever the mortgage payment is don't worry about that payment where you get a low interest for a year and then it changes over but don't worry because you'll be able to refinance because the house will have already gone up in value by then you nailed me you nailed me i did it

Speaker 34 right oh there you go so if you knew that if you experienced that if you accepted that without question

Speaker 34 then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaker 32 I loved the house. I wanted it.

Speaker 34 There you go. And didn't you deserve it? Isn't this the way it's supposed to be? Haven't you worked hard?

Speaker 32 Oh, boy.

Speaker 34 I mean, you're a good person, and aren't good things supposed to happen to good people? And isn't our economy supposed to offer this kind of opportunity?

Speaker 34 These opportunities don't seem to be showing up. in work,

Speaker 34 but they must be out there. Well, here it shows up in the real estate market

Speaker 34 or the stock market. Or, I mean, there are so many other places where this kind of prosperity thinking,

Speaker 34 and that is what we're talking about here. It is native to America.
It came here from the Puritans.

Speaker 34 This is what I spent five or six years tracing down because I wanted to understand how in the hell did I not see this?

Speaker 35 Oh, they call it like business networking or, I mean, mean, I just can't even imagine anybody being hooked in to any one of these things anymore.

Speaker 35 I mean, what, disguised as business networking or something?

Speaker 34 This entire fraudulent structure based on the endless chain, which is unsustainable, mathematically impossible, was obscured by simply a story about giving and receiving.

Speaker 34 In multilevel marketing, exactly the same structure, mathematically impossible, unsustainable, and so on, that will produce these massive loss rates, is covered over by a different story.

Speaker 34 It's the story that you are actually buying and selling products, that it's a business called direct selling.

Speaker 32 You've never been into a direct sales company.

Speaker 35 It's kind of hard to understand, but there is no comp plant out there that can beat it.

Speaker 32 Our guys are making triple and quadruple the money.

Speaker 32 You know, your best friend that you've been best friends with since high school and she's struggling a little bit and you know her so well, like call her up.

Speaker 32 We are building so quickly here and you can make some serious money. And anyone worth recruiting will also see it as a relationship.
Let me say that again. I want you to hear me again.

Speaker 32 Anyone worth recruiting will see joining you in this business as a relationship.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 37 Don't get too informative. If they ask you the informative questions, like

Speaker 38 give them that information, but do it in a very fun relaxed uplifting way we're at a ground floor level people people are not realizing what we have now and are not taking advantage of it I want you to take advantage of this opportunity and be able to just fly with it if you recruit others you'll move up the chain and indeed in multi-level marketing it's designed to transfer money from 99% to 1%.

Speaker 32 You want someone who will give it their all and stick around.

Speaker 34 Multilevel marketing has codified into an actual business the deceptions, the delusions, the manipulations that the airplane game introduced.

Speaker 32 It's amazing and it's not too good to be true.

Speaker 34 It's still based on a prosperity belief that we are entitled to these good things, that they can come to you through belief, through confidence, confidence, and through positive thinking.

Speaker 34 That thinking is now introduced and taught in multi-level marketing in a very sophisticated manner.

Speaker 34 So much so that there's no police department, there's no authority in the country right now that will openly acknowledge this for what it is, look at it in depth, and just show you in plain black and white that this thing is unsustainable and that it is indeed a racket.

Speaker 32 No one until now.

Speaker 32 This season on the dream, we take you behind the MLM curtain and follow the money from the lowest level to the top, the very top.

Speaker 34 Donald Trump received over a million dollars in one year for simply endorsing multi-level marketing.

Speaker 39 You have a great opportunity before you at ACN without any of the risks most entrepreneurs have to take. You have the ability to market breakthrough technology before it hits the critical mass.

Speaker 39 The beauty of ACN is that you're in business for yourself, but not by yourself. You have a great partner by your side with you every step of the way.

Speaker 39 You're entrepreneurs, yes, but being an entrepreneur is even better when you have the support of a great company like ACN.

Speaker 32 Coming up this season on the dream.

Speaker 40 It's so easy to use excuses because it means you don't have to be responsible for your results. You get to blame someone or something else for why you don't have what you want.

Speaker 40 But is that how you want to live? Is that the conversations you want to have?

Speaker 32 Wait, how much is this going to cost, though, actually? I think it's going to cost maybe six or seven hundred dollars. Oh my God.

Speaker 32 I mean, I need to stay in a hotel. We're over $1,000 now.
No, we're way over $1,000. Now we're up to like $1,500.

Speaker 32 If you look at the Federal Trade Commission fraud statistics, Pyramid Scheme and business opportunity fraud are the least reported fraud types that they monitor. Really?

Speaker 32 So this is not something that people like to tell people about. I just don't think, you know, sort of the accurate picture is just, is out there.

Speaker 41 And my point, no, I want to make this point. If the number was screwed up or there was no basis for it, then the administrative law judge would have said Brownman's numbers are phony.

Speaker 41 I'm not here to tell you that I was right.

Speaker 41 What I am telling you is that I was ignored.

Speaker 32 You just plop it on your own personal credit card.

Speaker 35 No one's going to say boo.

Speaker 32 All you have to do is order product in your team members' names and have it shipped to your address or another address. The company does not care if you sell the product.
They just care if you buy it.

Speaker 42 The guys up on the stage there talking about you just get five and the five get 25. Look at the potential here.

Speaker 42 I raised my hand and said,

Speaker 42 So I've got my calculator here. I'm just, you know, it doesn't make sense.
First of all, you know, if you just keep going, you'd pass the population of Canada in just a few levels.

Speaker 42 He started laughing. He says, look at that guy.
He's put a calculator in his hand.

Speaker 42 If you have to go consult numbers in order to believe in your own ability to make this thing work, you'll never succeed. And the crowd is laughing.

Speaker 32 The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported by me, Jane Marie, Dan Gallucci, Mackenzie Kassab, Lyra Smith, and Claire Rawlinson. Editing by Peter Clowney.

Speaker 32 Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris. The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayer, Chris Bannon, Dan Gallucci, and me.

Speaker 32 Special thanks today to Jenny Radalit, Nicole Cliff, Jamie Maline, Nan Dillon, Robert Fitzpatrick, and Matt Most.

Speaker 32 We appreciate you subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show wherever you listen.

Speaker 3 Rediscover skin that looks as vibrant as you feel.

Speaker 2 Medicate is a British clinical skincare brand trusted by dermatologists for visible, age-defying results without compromise.

Speaker 7 And right now is the best time of the year to try it.

Speaker 8 Medicate's 30% off during their Black Friday sale.

Speaker 10 If you've been curious about retinol, start with Medicaid's Crystal Retinol Night Serum.

Speaker 2 It's award-winning, ultra-gentle, and proven to work 11 times faster than traditional retinol, smoothing wrinkles, brightening dark spots, and firming skin without irritation.

Speaker 13 Or try the fan-favorite liquid peptide serum, clinically proven to smooth fine lines in just seven days.

Speaker 18 And if you want that lifted, deeply hydrated feel, Medicate's newest innovation, Advanced Pro Collagen Plus Peptide Cream, delivers visibly rejuvenated skin while reducing wrinkles.

Speaker 27 This is the moment to elevate your routine.

Speaker 9 Medicate's 30% off Black Friday sale is happening now through Tuesday, December 2nd.

Speaker 28 Visit medicate.us.

Speaker 30 That's M-E-D-I-K-8.us and save 30% on age-defying skincare.

Speaker 32 Hey guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. And if you're anything like me, holiday shopping has officially started.
And you know where I'm going? Ulta Beauty.

Speaker 32 They have the cutest gift sets right now, like the Sol de Janeiro, Shea Rosa, and Cheer Perfume Mist Trio. It smells so good.
I've been misting it everywhere. On me, on the street, on my pillow.

Speaker 32 It's a whole vibe. I'm obsessed with the Tarte Kindness Cafe collector set.
It's packed with everyday makeup must-haves, and it's honestly too cute to wrap.

Speaker 32 And if you need a cozy little self-care moment, the Moroccan Oil Hand Care Essentials kit is luxe, hydrating, and smells delicious. Don't worry if you can't decide right now.

Speaker 32 An Ulta Beauty gift card is the perfect gift for everyone. So whether you're gifting your bestie or yourself, make the season yours and head to Ulta Beauty today.
Ulta Beauty gifting happens here.

Speaker 32 Hannah Berner, are those the cozy Tommy John pajamas you're buying?

Speaker 40 Paige DeSorbo, they are Tommy John. And yes, I'm stocking up because they make the best holiday gifts.

Speaker 32 So generous.

Speaker 40 Well, I'm a generous girly, especially when it comes to me. So I'm grabbing the softest sleepwear, comfiest underwear, and best fitting loungewear.

Speaker 32 So nothing for your bestie.

Speaker 40 Of course, I'm getting my dad, Tommy John. Oh, and you, of course.

Speaker 32 It's giving holiday gifting made easy.

Speaker 40 Exactly. Cozy, comfy, Everyone's happy.
Don't wait. Shop Tommy John's biggest savings ever and get 50% off site-wide at tommyjohn.com slash comfort.

Speaker 32 Hey, dream listeners. It's finally here.
The dream plus, where you can get every single episode of our show with no ads. It's $5 a month.
It's the only tier. No commercials.
Plus, bonus content.

Speaker 32 This helps keep us independent. And your contribution will help change the way every listener hears the dream.

Speaker 32 We'll be able to take out the ads that we don't even know are getting put into this show, which is annoying to both you and us. We're also going to have an amazing discussion board.

Speaker 32 The interface has it cataloged under AMA, Ask Me Anything. But I don't love rules.

Speaker 32 So what I did is started a bunch of threads like ask Dan and I questions, general chit chat, just to make friends and stuff.

Speaker 32 And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shopping, and it's there. And we're just going to talk about what we bought.
It'll be fun.

Speaker 32 That's the dream.s-u-P-E-R-C-A-S-T dot com. Supercast.
Please, please go subscribe. It's five bucks.
It's less than a latte if you live in Los Angeles. See you there.