Burnlounge = YTB = Illegal Pyramid scam

Len Clements reports on the trial of a BurnLounge rep for promoting an illegal pyramid scheme. It's applicability to YTB? This is the last paragraph in Len's article

"Which leads us to interesting aspect #2: This is yet another in a long line of cases that seems to clearly define the act of making a profit from, and/or paying downline commissions on, the sale of the business, or more specifically the business's website, as being indicative of an illegal recruitment based pyramid scheme. Selling, profiting from, and/or paying commissions on lotions, vitamins, drinks, travel, telecom services and yes, even music downloads, is all perfectly fine. But you could carpet the entire surface of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with the legal red flag created by profiting from and/or paying commissions on the website, or any sales and marketing tool, that only those pursuing the income opportunity would purchase. "

I've posted the entire article below.

My recommendation to all of you YTB reps.... first ask yourself where you, or your upline, earns the vast majority of your profits from? It is from the money paid by your downline on their "booking engines" or whatever silly name you call the web site. And if so YOU are promoting the exact thing that poor Rob DeBoer, a mere BurnLounge rep, was promoting and for which he is now being prosecuted. Argue all you want - but if your profits come from selling a travel store, a booking engine, or any other marketing website, try not to earn enough money to be the one prosecuted.

And now, here's Len's full "Marketwave Alert #102"

Trial Begins for BurnLounge Top Rep
October 17, 2008Former USC football star Rob DeBoer will go on trial Tuesday (12/9/08) to defend his position as the top distributor for BurnLounge, which was declared an illegal pyramid scheme by the FTC and shut down in 2007. DeBoer, who was not part of BurnLounge corporate, is accused of deceptively promoting the BurnLounge program. Other top promoters and corporate members have also been sued by the FTC. BurnLounge sold music downloads via an internet website. However, the large majority of revenue to the company and commissions paid to distributors came from the $430 fee charged for the website itself, which was referred to as an "online music store". The FTC declared it a scheme where most of the income was derived from recruiting new people into the business of selling music downloads, not from the sale of the actual music.

A local news story can be read here:

http://www.thestate.com/local/story/612167.html

The FTC docket related to this case can be found here: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0623201/index.shtm


Commentary:

There are two interesting aspects to this case: First, that a high level distributor is being named in the FTC action and individually tried. This always begs the question, How many levels down from the apex of the national distributor hierarchy do you stop becoming the perpetrator and become the victim? Is it one level? Ten levels? The top 5% of earners? What?

This reminds me of a case back in the early '90s. I was contacted by the D.A. in Fresno, CA to serve as their expert witness in an action against an elderly couple, let's call them Bob and Betty, who had just held a hotel meeting (about 50 attended) promoting a scheme called Marathon. They found me from an exposé of Marathon I had just published, which was indeed an illegal pyramid. But Bob and Betty didn't know that! In fact, they were simply following the lead of their upline sponsors, who likely did what their sponsor told them to do. When I asked the D.A. where Bob and Betty fell in the chain, he didn't even know. I asked him if any of the existing reps who attended with their prospects would also be prosecuted, he responded no because they were Bob and Betty's "victims"! I was now even more confused. So, the reps in the audience could have been much more experienced, with larger downlines and be even higher in the chain that Bob and Betty, but now the criteria between perp and victim seemed to be who happened to be hosting the meeting that night. I didn't take that case.

I'm not saying Mr. DeBoer isn't a perp. My point is that being a distributor for a company doesn't exempt you from being declared one, and what defines you as such seems to be a very wide, grey line. All the more reason to have a clear understanding of what defines a legal direct sales business as opposed to an illegal pyramid scheme.

Which leads us to interesting aspect #2: This is yet another in a long line of cases that seems to clearly define the act of making a profit from, and/or paying downline commissions on, the sale of the business, or more specifically the business's website, as being indicative of an illegal recruitment based pyramid scheme. Selling, profiting from, and/or paying commissions on lotions, vitamins, drinks, travel, telecom services and yes, even music downloads, is all perfectly fine. But you could carpet the entire surface of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with the legal red flag created by profiting from and/or paying commissions on the website, or any sales and marketing tool, that only those pursuing the income opportunity would purchase.

Len Clements
Founder & CEO
MarketWave, Inc.
_________________________________________________________
MarketWave Alerts(tm) is copyrighted material. Alerts may be freely copied or forwarded in their entirety only under the condition that they not be edited or revised in any way, the MarketWave web site address be included, and the non-subscriber recipient be agreeable to receiving it. It is the belief of MarketWave that the information presented is accurate and truthful as of the date of the Alert. Any and all commentary is the expressed opinions, views and beliefs of Len Clements protected under the U.S. Constitution. Len Clements is not an attorney nor should any part of any Alert be construed as legal advice, nor should it replace the advice of competent legal counsel.

E4L & Brad Morse now a "Super Affiliate" program

Brad Morse still can't spell. His new scam http://emailguarantee.com/affiliates.htm will give you an idea of how dumb he is, with misspellings and all kinds of grammatical errors - AND the dumbest sounding sales pitch I've ever heard. "Make money even if you don't want to" has been repeated by him countless times before, so I guess no one has ever told him it's STUPID.

Obviously the above site is NOT entertainment products for less.... it's over a year past when he promised to launch that business... and he is still promising to launch it... but is really trying to divert everyone to this simplistic and aweful sounding affiliate program.

But instead of just calling Brad Morse a liar and stupid it's becoming pretty clear from the comments on the other E4L posts on this blog that a lot of people are now fed up enough to take legal action.

Frankly I think the easiest thing to do is get the products he uses to bad him.... like aweber and paypal. We should all email them and ask that they ban him - maybe read this blog for evidence of his failed promises and lies. I doubt either company wants to be a culprit to a scam artist.

To give a bit of background on E4L's litany of lies, here are all of the 2007 E4L.biz blog posts from first to last:
E4L.biz - scam or legit? - 7/16/07
E4L update - 8/3/07
E4L update - or lack of one - 8/14/07
Hotconference.com vs. E4L - 8/15/07
Comments now open for business - 8/20/07
E4L - stupid or a scam - 9/13/07
E4L's competition - 10/7/07
An E4L Prediction - 10/8/07
Last chance for E4L - 11/16/07
E4L sinks to a new low - 12/10/07

YTB hit, then hit again, then hit again

Not quite knocked out, YTB certainly is up against the ropes. At the risk of saying "I told you so" read my posts "YTB nail in the Coffin" and "YTB Travel - legal or illegal" where a year ago I was questioning the legality of their business model.

Keep in mind, if you've read this blog before, I'm not an MLM hater. But there are clear legal ways to run an MLM, and YTB clearly flaunted with the most obvious rules... those being that most of your income had to come from selling the end product, not internal marketing systems or pay directly for recruiting. When I was first approached about YTB the red flags jumped out immediately.

Sure enough, last year the Florida Attorney General began an investigation. Last week the California Attorney General actually filed suit calling YTB a "gigantic pyramid scheme" and one story has it that it resulted from a 2 year investigation AND negotiation with YTB, and now per this St Louis Dispatch article, two YTB agents and sales reps have filed a class action law suit for $100 million.

Hello YTB reps... time to get out.

Also per the Dispatch article YTB has withdrawn their application to get onto the American Stock Exchange. Why they'd even apply when all they ever seem to report is red numbers???

But the bottom line is that YTB makes the vast majority of it's money selling "booking engines" to new recruits and on recurring billings for those online travel booking sites... AND NOT for booking travel. That's ILLEGAL, at least in the way I understand the law... fortunately for me, California agrees with me.

10... 9... 8... 7... 6.... 5... 4... 3... not much more before it's a knock out.

More E4L BS

Over a year ago E4L was supposed to start selling Entertainment products online. A year later and Brad Morse doesn't even say anything about selling Entertainment products on his emails any more. He keeps pushing affiliate programs, and only promises to set up a "Back Office" for E4L'ers. After months and months of saying invites to the new back office were imminent, a count down for that happened over the last few weeks. And now he sends out an email that says "if you didn't get the invite" you have to sign up on at the "new member log in page".

Now... let's do a little test here. If you've been on Brad's BS email list waiting for E4L to launch (or just following the lies like I am) use the "Comments" link below to let us know if you DID or did NOT receive an invite.

My guess - NO ONE received an invite and he's getting everyone to re-opt in to his email campaigns, only to sell you more affiliate programs that have NOTHING to do with E4L's stated mission. Let the world know... did you get the invite promised, or not????

"The Right Start Program"

If Brad Morse gets lucky, there will be more reviews about this program... hopefully mine will be the only one ever.... but you have to listen to just how dumb he is via his audio at the site promoting this BS program here:
http://morsepromotions.com/rsa/ He tries to start out sounding smart, but he's so dumb it unravels into a tedious irrelevant story with numerous grammatical errors.

I would think that by my pointing to his site it could help him sell this program, but it's pretty hard to not get just how dumb he is when you listen to him speak. And if you don't notice what I think is another obvious thing... let me mention it now. He talks about "this guy" who way back in 1994 started learning how to make money on the internet and spent thousands of dollars doing it. He alludes to him now being an expert.... but after finding out (after an incredibly long winded and boring story that most people won't make it through) that he's the "guy", you have to wonder WHERE are the stories and testimonials about him actually having made any money??? There aren't any, probably because he's never made any. Some expert right?

He appears to be pinning his hopes on the "Right Start Program" after 14 years of trial and error.

The problem with this is that a couple of years ago he thought E4L.biz could make him money, but now 2 years later and 9 months after promising to launch it, it's STILL not launched. What he has gotten though are 90,000 emails who he is now trying to sell this new program to.

In case you're new to the Brad Morse and E4L story... there are plenty of posts on this blog about it... but he promised to set up an "Entertainment For Less" reseller site, and brought people in through an MLM structure, and by offering "free lifetime membership" he got 90,000 people to sign up. Now, he's put together the above "morsepromotions" site to promote what he's REALLY been working on these past few months.... an "affiliate program" that he wants YOU to sell so that HE can make a LOT of money. You the affiliate will make what most affiliates make... NEXT TO NOTHING. HE will make a killing if anyone actually promotes it and it takes off.

ME???? I'm writing to warn you not to because it's total BS that he promised 90,000 people to start a completely different business, and continues to promise that it will launch, but it appears for all intents and purposes it never will. All he really seems to want to do is sell this BS affiliate program to. And he's now only promising to get the E4L back office up IN A MONTH FROM NOW (that would be 10 months overdue in the unlikely event he actually gets it up).

So here's my review without having seen the program (99% chance I'm right):
YOU learn how to sell HIS program to OTHERS. YOU promise that they will make money by selling it themselves, and THEY promise to the new suckers that they will make money by selling HIS program too. Lots of sales for Brad, next to none for you.

Since he loved the "Get Google Ads Free" BS program he'll probably promote that you should promote it on Google and hope that your expenses are paid by your sales, and then you too can call that "free" advertising.

In the end, Brad has no testimonials of ever making an honest dime on the internet, but is now promoting himself as an expert who can teach you how to do what he's never done. And if you buy it, he will finally make some money... but I won't call it an "honest" dime. It seems incredibly dishonest to me.

More of the same from E4L.biz

Can you believe it's now 8 months since E4L.biz was supposed to launch, and it's still not launched. And yet again, another email has gone out to those who "signed up" saying that more work needs to be done and it will be launched soon... and the email once again, is Brad Morse mostly pitching a get rich quick scheme that is designed to make him rich!

He's now got a full fledged marketing site pitching a program that he'd like to sell to the 90,000+ downline who have been waiting for E4L.biz to launch. NOT for a totally different get rich quick scheme. So apparently he's been busy with all kinds of things that don't help launch E4L... which again makes me think that Brad is a con man who has no intention of ever launching E4L. He's been promising to launch it since August 1st 2007, and every few weeks an email goes out that says "this week" or "next week" a new back office will be launched... and that STILL has not happened despite about 10 "this week" promises over the past 6 months. In fact, the last time I checked the old back office wasn't up anymore and there was no new back office. No office... no biz in my opinion.

So should you believe Brad? I clearly don't because the only thing he's launched is a program he'd like to sell to his downline. HOW did he find time to build it when he's supposed to be working on E4L???? Well, my guess is that he's not working on getting E4L launched. And as long as the "faithful" keep waiting around, and fork out money for his BS get rich quick programs, he'll keep making the same phony promises. The faithful have stuck around 8 months after the launch was promised... I wonder now if any more are willing to admit that they believed as early as a month or so ago, and have finally given up? I believed it right up until the August 1st launch... but once that date was missed I started thinking about everything else that was missing... and still is... like a pay plan, a commission structure, a peek at how the site is shaping up, a catalog of contacts and suppliers so we could verify he's really talking to actual people about real things.

Well, as far as I know, 8 months later there still isn't a pay plan or anything else that proves the business will ever launch. I mean the 10+ failed back office promises for "this week" should be enough for anyone to scream SCAM... but apparently there are still quite a few believers.

E4L.biz about to blow

A new email went out to members stating that Brad has been spending his time creating an audio eBook that he's going to sell to members. No word on when the business that he's sucked 90,000 people into will launch. Only that he wants more money from their pockets put into his own pockets. Another aside about server problems causing delays that will now be fixed... yada yada... same old same old when it comes to his annoying excuses... and then he throws in that he wants to sell the members on advertising... yup... more money in Brad's pocket taken from the poor followers who thought this messed up idea was a "dream".

To see what the members had to say about this continuing travesty I checked their Forum where complainers complain, and zealots excuse... and they've LOCKED the forum to new posts.

Absolutely incredible the depths this cretin will go. My comments section is open to all, and while I can delete them, I promise only to delete off-color ones. So E4L'ers.... tell me it's great and Brad should be excused and given more time... or tell HIM what you really think without fear of being shut down!!!