Holiday Handbook: Browse shopping deals, recipes, tips for gathering safely and more. Imagine if someone came up to you when you were in college and said you could be a millionaire, drive fancy cars, even fly in private jets — just by selling an energy drink and getting your friends to sell the product too.
You might have been excited by the opportunity. But today, some universities are issuing warnings telling students to be careful of a company doing just that — targeting, they say, college kids. Boreyko claims in one. The online videos feature private jets and fancy cars, and students are buying in and signing up. But one such student said that after joining Vemma he lost money and more.
Basically, they just promised you the world and back. Want an issue investigated? Email Rossen Reports. Vemma operates around the world. A few weeks ago, Morton was pitching Verve, a vitamin-infused energy drink billed as a healthier alternative to Red Bull or Monster, made by Tempe company Vemma. As one veteran of five MLM ventures puts it, in this industry, the product being sold is really the opportunity to make money — powered by an evangelical profit fervor that has been known to go sideways.
To mutate into an illegal pyramid scheme. In the wake of a highly-publicized case of alleged college-campus usery, Vemma saw its bank accounts, real estate and global assets frozen by a federal judge last year. I wanted to travel to places like this, and experience life and meet people and party all over the world and have nice things.
They want to be successful on their own. It was a game-changer for Vemma and CEO Boreyko, an industry legacy whose own parents were highly successful Amway distributors, schooling him on network marketing from a young age.
But in grasping for the sun, Vemma lost its wings. Around the same time as the FTC investigation, an Italian watchdog authority slapped Vemma with the pyramid scheme label and prohibited the company from further practicing business in that country.
Wewerka now also sells for Jeunesse, but he stands by his admiration for Boreyko, even as Vemma struggles to stay afloat under severe restrictions imposed by the judge in the FTC case. But loyalty is hard to cultivate though hard times in an industry that sells outsized success as its prime product.
By the end of the following day, managers called employees to inform them they were all on temporary layoff. In November, Vemma agreed to even tighter compensation rules, including the stipulation that affiliates could no longer qualify for commissions through their own purchases. That tendency toward extreme exaggeration is why an anonymous figure named YPRPariah first started blogging in the spring of last year.
But in a couple of anony-mous Gchat conversations, Pariah insists he is neither. He first encountered Vemma on the campus of the Midwestern university he attended after a friend of a friend invited him to a dorm room and played a video featuring Morton.
The drinks were fine, he says, and persuading others to buy the product was easy. His network began with a few friends on campus before branching out among several states. Some of the people he signed up were unable to make money. That line cuts to the heart of the multilevel-marketing industry. What came next followed a pattern that would be familiar to many who have been exposed to Vemma. Carlucci was first teased with a vague idea.
The first goal is to get a target like Carlucci to come to a meeting, without actually calling it a meeting. Carlucci heard enough to be intrigued by the pitch. His sudden success — three recruits in 24 hours! Carlucci was encouraged to make a list of everyone he knew. Each and every one of them would become a potential recruit. He went to local home events, where other leaders singled him out in the crowd. This is all just a lie.
Carlucci would give out free drinks on campus in an attempt to get people to come to meetings. He constantly texted — he now says harassed — people he barely knew, in an effort to get them to join. All the while, Carlucci had been advised to avoid telling his parents what he had been up to.
After five months, Carlucci was flat broke. That was bad. What was worse was what had happened to his reputation on campus. In some ways, Carlucci is lucky to have run out of money. Quitting is seen by Morton and others in Vemma as the ultimate failure. It was as if I was talking to someone in a cult.
Because it has such a strong foothold on college campuses, Vemma has also become a test case for some professors. Its members have also attempted to classify the ways in which their fellow college students change once they join the company.
In response to this wave of criticism, Vemma affiliates have started an online counteroffensive. Some have created websites in an attempt to ensure that a simple Google search, often the first line of defense for worried parents or skeptical college students, returns more positive results.
This year, Boreyko announced that his company would no longer be known as a multilevel marketer, but as an affiliate marketer instead. Tonight, Morton stands at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Strip, his jaw clenched, as he talks about one company in particular: Wake Up Now. Allegiances in multilevel mar-keting can change in an instant.
Later, downstairs in the main hall, Morton sits backstage, waiting his turn to give what will be the final speech of the weekend. Amid a legion of production people working silently on laptops to keep the spectacle moving, Morton watches as dozens of fellow YPRers, many of whom were inspired to join because of his example, climb the steps leading to the stage and transform from nervous kids to world-beaters, taking selfies with the thousands in attendance as a cheering backdrop.
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