Organized Crime Expert - Amway Just Like MafiaAmway knew it was in trouble
when the internet arrived and the details about the companys pyramid schemes
began appearing online. A memo dated Dec 19, 1997, that surfaced in a lawsuit,
contains the details of a voice message sent out to the Amway leadership, by
then Vice President, Ken MacDonald, that reveals just how desperately Amway
tried to control the flow of information on the internet.MacDonald said ...
"This message is on the internet ... weve hired consultants and been working
very diligently on all of the secret computer language that helps the search
engines pick a site and because of that weve moved the positive Amway sites
quite a bit up in the web search engines, and some of the negative sites down.
And lastly, that we are working to provide very soon, for all those who
qualified Emeralds and above ... their own personal homepage so we will have
tons of positive Amway information on the web," he said.There is one particular
document that the company has gone to great lengths to stop people from reading
on the internet. In fact, on June 12, 1998, Amway went to court and got a
Protective Order in attempt to keep this specific report hidden from public
view.Professor G Robert Blakey was retained as an expert witness for the
plaintiffs in the 1998 Procter & Gamble v Amway lawsuit to render an opinion on
Amway's business practices. He is one of the nation's foremost authorities on
organized crime. Blakey was directly involved in drafting and implementing
RICO-type legislation in 22 of the more than 30 states that enacted racketeering
laws.After studying Amways business structure and functions, Blakey, wrote a
damning report that stated: It is my opinion that the Amway business is run in a
manner that is parallel to that of major organized crime groups, in particular
the Mafia. The structure and function of major organized crime groups, generally
consisting of associated enterprises engaging in patterns of legal and illegal
activity, was the prototype forming the basis for federal and state racketeering
legislation that I have been involved in drafting. The same structure and
function, with associated enterprises engaging in patterns of legal and illegal
activity, is found in the Amway business.For those not familiar with the RICO
Act, it "was passed by ... Congress to enable persons financially injured by a
pattern of criminal activity to seek redress through the state or federal
courts," according to the Rico Act website. Amway has been sued hundreds of
time under the RICO Act.Blakey Report OutedIn the early spring of 2004, Amway
became extremely upset when the full Blakey Report began appearing on the world
wide web. The companys attorneys flew into action trying to suppress
it.Initially, they successfully used the protective order to force websites to
remove the report. For example, on March 11, 2004, the MLM Survivor website
reported that the Quixtar Blog had removed the Blakey Report from its servers
and said "... according to the site owner, Amway's lawyers are frantically
trying to find out who leaked. They assert the report is confidential, and
covered by a protective order."However, Amway was not as successful with getting
it removed from other sites. MLM Survivor reported that company attorneys also
contacted MLM, to demand that they remove the report from its website because it
was sealed under a protective order.Survivors response to Amway was, We can't
remove what we don't have. MLM Survivor does not now, nor has it ever, had a
copy of the report on its website. Link, yes. Copy, no," the website said.This
must be like deja vu to MLM. The website had already been hit with one SLAPPer
lawsuit by Amway. SLAPP is the abbreviation for Strategic Lawsuits Against
Public Participation. According to the First Amendment Center, SLAPPers do not
sue to achieve a litigation outcome; rather, they file to silence their
opposition. Generally, the mere filing of the suit or just the threat of suit
accomplishes that purpose; www.firstamendmentcenter.orgHowever, it looks like
the SLAPPer failed to obtain its objective with Survivor because the site is
still alive and well on the internet. In fact, Survivor had this to say about
the lawsuit. "I have to admit that I've been waiting for about six years (as
long as this site has been in existence) for Amway/Quixtar/Alticor to slap me
with a lawsuit for one trumped-up thing or another. I never expected my
first-ever lawsuit to be such a farce," it said.In another futile attempt to
have the report removed from a site, on March 2, 2004, Amway Attorney Griffin,
sent a letter with a copy of the court order, to a research professor by the
name of David Touretzky. On March 21, 2004, he wrote back to Attorney Griffin
and stated: My reading of this order leads to the following
observations:Paragraph 16 says that the terms of the order shall remain in force
"to the extent that the information in such material is not or does not become
known to the public..." Since I obtained my copy of the Blakey Report from a
publicly accessible web page, the information clearly has become known to the
public. The order therefore no longer applies to this document.Paragraph 16 also
says that the protective order is "binding upon all persons to whom confidential
information is disclosed hereunder." The information was not disclosed to me
under the terms of this order. I was never a party to this litigation, nor do I
have any relationship of any kind with Amway, or Proctor & Gamble, or their
respective attorneys, agents, or consultants. The protective order was never
intended to apply to totally unrelated parties like me, or the news media, and
it is not binding upon me now.Touretzkys reasoning would apply to the copy of
the report that I obtained as well. When I discovered my copy a while back, it
was already published on a number sites. It is currently posted on just about
every Amway website out there.The entire report can be read on the
www.merchantsofdeception.com website of Eric Scheileber, a former Amway
Distributor, who wrote the book, Merchants of Deception, that prompted the
current FBI investigation of Amway, and an expose by NBCs Dateline. (The book
discloses Amways close ties to the Republican party and both Bush
administrations and can be downloaded free, for a limited time, on the
website)Why Was Amway So Worried?Why was Amway so worried about people reading
the report? Probably because it very specifically explains how the Amway
Corporations family-business structure is just like the mafia. According to
Blakey, Amway has a family structure nearly identical to those found in
organized crime.The company has remained a privately held company since it was
founded by Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos in 1959, Blakey notes. But control of
the corporation has now shifted to the sons of the founders, Richard DeVos, Jr
and Steve Van Andel, he says.The report also describes the Amway pyramid
schemes. "The Amway Corporation primarily provides the various products and
services that serve as a backdrop for the pyramid-type recruitment and
motivational schemes undertaken in the Amway business."As evidence of the
mafia-like family structure, the report points out that Amway's Policy Board
consists of family members Richard DeVos, Sr, Steve Van Andel, Richard DeVos,
Jr, Jay Van Andel, Cheri DeVos Vander Weide, Dave Van Andel, Doug DeVos, Nan Van
Andel, Dan DeVos and Barb Van Andel Gaby.On June 7, 2002, the shift of control
in authority that Blakey mentioned in 1998, was further confirmed by a press
release that announced that Doug DeVos would become president of Amways parent
company, Alticor,* after the retirement of Rich DeVos.Upon taking office, Doug
DeVos, in true mafia lingo, was quoted as saying: "Its humbling to be asked to
step into a job that has been done so well for the past 43 years, first by my
dad and then by my brother."Further confirmation of the control being passed
down, was the fact that Doug DeVos joined Chairman Steve Van Andel (Van Andels
son) in the Office of the Chief Executive, extending the dual leadership
structure first established by company co-founders Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel,
according to the press release.Blakey explains that family members are drawn in
to the business as a matter of right, with family members being given
responsibilities that outweigh their capability. The basis for this assertion is
with Amway itself. As an example, Blakey refers to the deposition testimony of
Jay Van Andel's 2 children, David and Nan Van Andel, in the P&G lawsuit.When
deposed, they both held high positions with the company. Yet Blakey says, their
testimony reflected a complete lack of knowledge and business experience. It
was obvious that neither obtained their position on merit, nor would they have
been permitted to continue in their position in an regular company. Placing
unqualified family members in high positions is also common in the Mafia, Blakey
reports.What About Other Amway Families?Amway stresses that once you are
involved, you are a member of the Amway family, and your upline and downline are
part of your family. Amway becomes a way of life for its participants, much like
those involved with the Mafia, Blakey notes.He describes how, "You are to
"edify" or honor your upline, and "counsel" with them regularly," and claims,
"The "upline" assume virtual "parental" control, and distributors are urged to
"counsel" on all aspects of their life, including topics such as which car to
buy or how to handle marital problems," Blakey wrote.According to the report,
distributors are even told how to dress. For example, "Wilson women" (those in
the Don Wilson family) at functions do not show ankles, thighs or cleavage, he
notes.The absolute control is also evidenced by the Amway Distributors
Association Board. At the time of Blakeys report, the Board consisted of 30
distributors who were elected. However, 15 were chosen off a list of nominees
compiled by Amway. The Board is led by the Executive Committee which also
includes family leaders, which all but guarantees that the family leaders, or
their designees, will get elected and retain control of Amway.Although the DeVos
and Van Andel families control the corporation, Blakey says a 1996 Amway
Corporate Culture Document shows there are at least 8 other lines of family
sponsorship that control the distributors groups. Every participant is
considered to be a member of a family, with one individual positioned at the top
of a chain of command.In 1998, the Dexter Yager family had the largest
organization in North America, and the Bill Britt family was enormously
comprised of over 149,000 distributorships.However, it should be noted that Bill
Britt has since been booted out of Amway and is under investigation for a host
of scams. According to an August 12, 2004, letter from Robert FitzPatrick,
President of Pyramid Scheme Alert, to North Carolina's Attorney General,
requesting an investigation of the Bill Britt organization, "Last year, it was
reported that Bill Britt was involved in what authorities consider perhaps the
largest single financial fraud case in North Carolina history in terms of the
amount of dollars that disappeared," the letter stated.The August 8, 2003
edition of The Triangle Business Journal reported that in spring, 2001 Bill
Britt invested $5 million in a fraudulent investment scheme perpetrated by
Cornerstone Management, a company under investigation and prosecution by the SEC
since 1999, according to the letter.At the time of the Blakey report, other
Amway families included: the Childers (team of six Diamonds); the Stewarts; the
Gooch family; the Bryans (Down East); the Wilsons (WOW); the Puryears (World
Wide Dreambuilders); the Hays (International Connection); the Matz family (
International Diamond Association); the Dornans (Network 21); the Strehlis
(Creative Life Styles); and the INA (International Networking Association), run
by a group of seven families.According to the report, each family is involved in
the Amway business, in terms of using the Amway Sales and Marketing Plan, and is
also involved in Business Support Materials (BSM), or "tools," which include
books, tapes, and rallies, Blakey determined.However, each family kingpin rules
his own Amway distributor pyramid and his own tool pyramid. But even though
these pyramids are all separate corporate entities, they all work together to
promote the Sales and Marketing Plan and the tools business, the report
found.What Else Is Amway Hiding?What else is Amway hiding? Most likely Blakeys
assertion that "The Mafia uses "omerta" and violence for control," and "Amway
has other methods, with similar effect."Blakey claims, "Distributors must always
honor their upline. No negative talk or action is permissible. A distributor who
steps out of line is punished. ... serious offenders may be dealt with by having
portions of their business taken away - e.g. they can no longer appear at
rallies, or downline distributors are "re-routed." There are also reports of
violence against those who attempt to take action against Amway, the report
maintains.(Part 2 of this article will discuss specific incidents of this
"omerta" and violence and other information contained in the report that Amway
fought so hard to keep hidden.)* Alticor was announced in October 2000 as the
parent company for Amway (direct selling), Quixtar (e-commerce);
www.alticor.com.By Evelyn Pringlee.pringle@sbcglobal.netMiamisburg, OH
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