17 Stories From People Tricked By MLMs

15.

“It happened to my boyfriend and I! We both are heavily involved in the fashion industry and a connection offered us both an opportunity to be ‘custom menswear stylists’ for what turned out to be an MLM that sells made-to-measure men’s suits and casual clothing. His connection showed us the fabric swatches, styling books and catalogs, and walked us through her day-to-day which sounded appealing. I have a degree in fashion design and knew that the fabric quality was very nice and the ‘brand’ was reputable. After paying $500 each for the onboarding package and going through weeks of video training, we both started to run into problems.”

“The first problem was that we didn’t have a network of people who could realistically afford $1000 suits. We both struggled finding clients. In order to complete the initial training you had to sell one outfit to a client. I ended up buying my boyfriend a cotton button-down shirt and corduroy pants for around $400 to finish the training. At this stage, he realized that this wasn’t for him and did not complete his training. So, now we’re collectively $1400 in the hole and can’t get any clients. Our mentor was calling me every week to check in to see if I had any clients set up. Within a few weeks of completing the training she started encouraging me to recruit the people I worked with to join the company as well. This was all happening in January 2020. Come March, I ultimately had to leave the MLM because there was no way I could establish any type of clients while quarantining during COVID. I politely told my mentor that I would be stepping back. A few months later, she called me and asked me to consider joining again. Since I had stopped previously, I would have to purchase the $500 package and complete the training again. I declined and hadn’t heard from her again until a few months ago…when she tried to recruit me once again.”

—Anonymous