Herbalife - the largest pyramid scheme in history?

Hey, so I came across this film : Betting on Zero
www.imdb.com...
www.rottentomatoes.com...

"Writer/director Ted Braun follows controversial hedge fund titan Bill Ackman as he puts a billion dollars on the line in his crusade to expose Herbalife as the largest pyramid scheme in history."

Bill Ackman's short position on Herbalife is already well past 1 billion dollars. I am currently watching the documentary stated above, haven't finished it yet. But it looks very peculiar as you start digging deep into it, it reminded me of the documentaries about the Cult of Scientology.
It definitely looks very similiar in many aspects, especially the founder of Herbalife (Mark R. Hughes), who committed suicide, tend to give speeches about Herbalife that resemble the good ol' American dream. Herbalife seems to be targeting the people with low-income and seems to keep sustainable by entering new markets, especially in Asia, however...... one day, they will run out of markets to enter.

In short, Herbalife might be the one of the biggest scams and pyramid schemes in history.
For those unfamiliar with pyramid schemes: A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products or services. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.

I've been searching for any threads regarding Herbalife here, though I haven't found anything really. So I'd like you all to share your experiences with Herbalife and share your opinions on this.

Open The Book Face up throw a dart. It's gotten a little better, but for a while it was nothing but "friends" wanting to help you get rich through..advocare, Herbalife, Thrive, the list goes on and on.
My wife, after countless hours of battle, got into Rodan and Fields to prove me wrong. I gave up and said go for it and you can take all your girlfriends on a glorious vacation while I baby sit everyone's children.
It's been a year and I haven't been asked to babysit yet. But I damn sure had to deal with that crap at tax time!

It is, a massive scam. There are many documentaries on this scam.

The worse part of any MLM is that it preys on people that want to hear they can pull themselves up. Nothing you say after that will matter.

Herbs and spices can be medicines. If you take the right spice or herb at the right time it can help you. If you take them all the time, they can be harmful. Herbalife is a big scam, so are many of the Fad nutrition programs and consensus of the day is all screwed up.

Blue zones are areas where people live a long time. Their diet matches their ancestral eating habits, if you try to feed that diet to someone of a different epigenetic metabolism, it could harm them. We need to evaluate these things ourselves, not just take misapplied scientific evidence as real. Our diet needs to match our heredity. Everyone is different.

My mother was selling Herbalife many years ago and the people would feel better for a while, but after a while they would get problems. She was a salesman type of person, but I never believed in the Herbalife stuff she sold. She did not comprehend that she was conning people into buying things they really did not need. She was a good person at heart but was blinded to what was really going on. She also sold Stanley, Christmas around the world, and Amway for a while.

It takes a while sometimes before the problem shows up when changing diet, even to get a B12 deficiency it can take five years. I do not believe in these kind of things, I also do not believe all people will benefit from increasing green veggies or fruit in their diet. I do believe too much wheat is no good for anyone, too much of any grain is not good. I do think that moderate oats and Rye is all right. We do need some of the chemistry of grains. Everyone is different though, I cannot tell anyone how to eat, I can say they need to find out what they are intolerant to and I will tell them not to completely remove something from their diet if they are intolerant. Now if they are allergic, that is different, they should probably avoid that food chemistry.

a reply to: Necrose

MLM's don't just ruin people's finances. MLM's can ruin people's character. I'm not saying anyone in an MLM is bad. But I've seen an awful lot of bad behavior from friends, and ex-friends, who have gotten swept up Young LIving.

Their behavior and attitude has only gotten worse since it started, even though in a few cases their finances have gotten a big boost.

I used to work for a shady company called 'Life Plus' here in Britain. Also a 'vitamin and supplements' company.
They were a pyramid scheme, no doubt about it. The manager looked like a football hooligan on steroids, wearing a suit.
They actually fired me by planting false evidence. Don't want to get into too much detail but someone in the accounts dep. was doing dodgy stuff, I did something to show it wasn't me [as they tried to pin it on me] and then they used my own evidence against me despite clearly not being the original documents [which were never found because the scammer had disappeared them].

Man were they shifty. I just wish the whole company all the worst. I won't forget either. I was glad that they fired me as it was a lovely spring day and I was rather doing something else.

But Herbalife is not the only one, there are other products that are build by pyramid scheme and one of them is www.amway.com...

So which one of those 2 is biggest you decide. I bet it is Amway.

a reply to: Necrose

I loved Longaberger pottery and baskets so much my rep asked me to become a sales person just so I could get the discount. She insisted there wouldn't be any pressure to sell. I purchased a lot of items and really like the quality. Soon enough she started pressuring me to meet sales goals. I quit there on the spot and started purchasing off of ebay. This lady didn't get the hint and started to tag me on Facebook sales. I blocked her. It is a sickness! The funny thing is that a lot of the sales people would probably do very well in a traditional sales job instead of a pyramid scheme! Longaberger was a great American company until greed got in the way, and now all that is left is a bankrupt weird basket shaped building.