Gary Ridgeway: How to become a better person in Quixtar/Amway!

There is a taped interview with Ridgeway where he claims Amway made him a better person because he claims he didn't kill as many people when he was doing Amway. It has been on You tube. Of course, he killed people over several different years. Exact count of bodies while he was in Amway, most likely unknown. Whether he killed anyone he actually personally encountered while 'practicing' Amway, most likely unknown. He was however an admitted predator of 'ladies of the evening.' He therefore kept some pretty unsavory company at least." Significantly enough, Amway, and therefore Ridgeway, always like to represent themselves as 'door to door' sellers; salespeople in an industry that Phil Ellenbecker, proponent of Wisconsin's Malinda's Law, has documented to be rife with horrific crime and human abuse.

Amway can't have it both ways; they can't be a door to door sales company (as they claim to be) and also be far removed from the horrific affairs that true door to door industries are known for. They are the 'deep pocket' scoundrels which lurk behind the Direct Selling Association and are most likely the largest single 'quiet' opposition to Malinda's Law in the State of Wisconsin, proposed legislation which seeks to reign in direct selling abuses and more closely regulate a corrupt/mafia-like industry. To succeed against the DSA, one must actually succeed against the hidden enemy, the extracted filthy lucre propping up the DeVos and Van Andel vast Amway World Cult! Their supposed success based on a 'closed market swindle' of incredible proportions.

A person may become a better con man in Amway, not necessarily a better person from the standpoint of morality. A person joining an organization run like the mafia may possibly have their financial situation improved, but aren't they corrupted by that very same corruption?

Amway is a reality inverting affair, a complete perversion of old time faith, and also one which--significantly enough--has in the past depicted itself to be a God fearing, Right leaning, Christian affair--while all the while carrying out fraud on an incredible scale! Money is the god for which these cult initiates worship.

Isn't it absolutely ironic that the very same thing that these cult believers worship is the exact same sacrifice they make to their Amway God?

Who cannot recall the fake money raining down on the stadium of people in Dateline's 2004 Expose on Amway Corruption? Significantly enough, they use this very same lust for wealth as evidence that they are merely a business organization; a fraud that helps keep Amway's criminal money extracting fraud operating and one of many reality inverting myths that British born author, David Brear thoroughly describes in his guest articles on Quixtar Cult Intervention.

It is significant that Gary Ridgeway also dreamed the 'Amway Dream' all the while possibly carrying out some of the most gruesome murders in modern times!

The Amway training tools--a con themselves--teach adherents of the 'closed market swindle' basically how to become a more effective con man while also claiming to be just another of these 'door to door' salesman. The traveling magazine sellers are just the tip of the ice berg in what most people consider door to door selling. The youth on the traveling sales crews are simply amateurs compared to the Amway operated con game, where social networking seeks to circumvent the cold door knocking approach which is widely understood in the door to door scenario. Amway cult initiates do their door knocking in a carefully well thought out deception, usually incorporating the infamous curiosity invite; therefore they work in a significantly different manner than the magazine sellers, whose door to door con only appears more obvious. Of course appearances can be very deceptive indeed.

The desire to swindle on a large scale basis is at the heart of both the fly by nights (like the traveling sales crews) and the supposedly legit Amway World Cult. Both incorporate recruitment into their pernicious affairs. The lives destroyed in the process are meaningless to either group and of course the Direct Selling Association has blood on its hands. Anyone opening their door to either industries is a potential victim; sadly, the Amway victims many times are financially victimized far worse than someone being scammed out of a few thousand in a magazine sales con or check washing scam. Amway cult members have occulted themselves as independent businessmen for decades, a reality inverting myth--since the cult initiators hold all the cards in their carefully constructed contract all supposed independents must sign. The cult initiates are the willing recipients of deceptive propaganda, and monopoly buyers in what David Brear correctly has described as a closed market swindle of global significance!

Folks who fall prey to the deception of the Amway Dream are in a 'reality inverting black hole' and are forever changed. They follow strange gods indeed, and their family members are left to yearn for their son, daughter or family member as they once knew them. Adherents of these cults, whether it is the traveling sales crew or the pernicious 'the business' cult are all somehow changed significantly enough that their own family members do not even recognize them as being the same person. Family is alienated and must watch from the sidelines as these former family and friends are swallowed up in their worship of the AmQuix god. The offering up of gold to the gods soon follows; the same thing which significantly goes on in another pernicious world cult headed up the Sung Yung Moon.

Horrific stories exist in the door to door industry, all of which Amway Global significantly claims to be part of. They take their place along side of the other bad players like Kirby, Southwestern Company, and all the sundry fly by night traveling magazine/household product hawkers, the door to door knockers. Intent to defraud and fraud are most likely to occur, no matter how one opens their door to these scoundrels.

Update: I've added a short video to this post. Amway indeed can make you a better person, even if you don't have time to kill! To see additional Ridgeway/Amway videos, click here.

Continued Exploitation of Traveling Sales Crews Supported by the Direct Selling Association!

Exploitation of young people working in traveling sales crews in the direct selling industry is a despicable situation! Recently while I was doing research on Quixtar I came across this traveling horror caravan of greed and youth exploitation which has raised the hairs on the back of my neck in ire!

On March 25, 1999 seven youths were killed and five others badly hurt in a van roll over crash near Janesville, Wisconsin. This accident occurred when the driver who did not have a drivers license attempted to change seats with another occupant while traveling at high speed. The van was occupied by members of a traveling magazine sales crew which included Malinda Turvey, daughter of Phil Elenbecker who has been working tirelessly to see legislation passed in Wisconsin which bears his daughter's name: Malinda's Law.

Malinda's law seeks to make widespread changes to the way traveling sales crew companies in Wisconsin operate. Among other measures, the proposed law would:

• Require employers of traveling sales crews to register with the state before conducting business and carry permits showing they are licensed to sell.

• Mandate that members of sales crews be considered employees and prohibit the use of independent contractors or minors.

• Require traveling sales crews to post a $10,000 bond or equivalent when registering with the state, and to pay employees at least twice a month.

• Limit the times of day when sales crews may be in the field.

If passed, Wisconsin's bill would be the most restrictive in the country says Phil Elenbecker. Under the bill, traveling sales crews would be defined as two or more people who travel together and live away from their permanent residences while selling.

The Direct Selling Association opposes passage of Malinda's Law. One member company of the DSA, The Southwestern Company has lobbied the Wisconsin legislature to defeat and/or make changes to the bill which would render it nearly meaningless and allow the exploitation of their youthful recruits to continue; these independent contractors, mostly college students, carry out door to door selling of books and publications in the state. Another door to door selling company has also been actively involved in shooting down Malinda's Law: Kirby vacuums, another member of the Direct Selling Association coven. Amy Robinson, how do you defend the DSA in this situation?

A close examination of Southwestern Company quickly reveals a pattern of exploitation of its representatives that is nearly similar to the “methods of operation” of other traveling sales crews operating in Wisconsin. Southwestern claims that it operates more ethically than the other rogue traveling crews in Wisconsin and points to the DSA code of ethics exactly the same way other disreputable companies under the DSA umbrella do for some degree of respectability they believe the DSA represents.

Southwestern Company deserves to be singled out for exploitation of its recruits whom it terms to be independent contractors much the same way that Amway/Quixtar distributors are "Independent Business Owners." This turns out to be a very advantageous situation for any company (Southwestern, Amway, Kirby, along with almost all MLM companies) because they can sidestep labor laws designed to protect employees in a employer/employee relationship. Youths working for Southwestern Company report that they many times work 80 hour work weeks and must attend Sunday sales meetings as well as travel long distances to attend meetings in Nashville. They also claim that earnings are withheld to the end of the summer selling season making them basically enslaved to the situation they find themselves in almost the same way as the other despicable traveling sales crews operating under the National Field Selling Association, another disreputable trade association.

When direct selling companies (to include the likes of Quixtar/Amway) incorporate independent contractors, they basically insulate themselves from responsibility for any bad situation that is part and parcel of the the industry and completely avoid labor laws which might protect an hourly worker from such deceit and abuse. Just as Amway "independents" are exploited out of countless hours of work and even brainwashed into basically "paying" the company instead of the company "paying" them, these traveling sales independents become responsible for their own actions although they are actively generating profits for the companies they represent. At the worst the exploited go out and exploit the public by many times misrepresenting themselves and making untrue claims. This sound exactly similar to situations I've described where Quixtar reps misrepresent themselves and the business opportunity?

Victims of these direct selling companies go out and make victims of others through recruitment, misrepresentations, and deceit. Sadly this is the way most of the DSA companies operate. At the worst end of the spectrum, there have been murders, rapes, and robberies. At the other end of the spectrum, people have been victimized by cons, and schemes perpetrated on them and for which they in turn perpetrate on others. My last post compared and correctly condemned modern direct selling companies. The DSA should hang its head in shame for supporting companies with their toothless code of ethics which attempts to provide a veil of accountability and respectability to the likes of Southwestern, Quixtar, Kirby, YourTravelBiz, Crazy Fox Herbalife, Mannatech, Usana, as well as others operating thinly veiled product pyramid schemes.

People recruited into direct selling businesses (all of which have the potential for making door to door sales) are many times not given background checks, and regardless of past criminal behavior are free to go out and knock on doors or show the plan to success to anyone. Just ask the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, who claimed he didn't kill as many people when he was working his Amway business. I am looking into whether any of his murder victims were also recruited into the Amway business by Ridgeway?

Kirby salesmen have a long history of problems and some have been convicted of heinous crimes: murders, rapes, cons, and thefts. For more information on Kirby crimes click here. Kirby, a DSA member has also actively opposed Malinda's Law. The despicable DSA has opposed Malinda's Law and therefore furthers the exploitation of youths in the state of Wisconsin as well as all the harm done to them and people receiving a knock on their door from a questionable gypsy seller. The DSA fears that implementation of this protective legislation will open the flood gates and cause other states to consider enacting similar legislation to protect their citizens.

One of the end results of the Federal Do Not Call list is to bring door to door selling back into prominence; think about that the next time you get ready to set down to diner--your phone may not wring, but your door may!

Amway Global Cult Intervention advocates passage of state and federal legislation to curb the continued exploitation of our Nation's youth, protect its citizens, and take away the "independent contractor" loophole which allows direct sellers to continue the exploitation of the distributors, crew, and citizens. I have placed a list of links in the right hand panel of this blog that I ask every reader to follow. There is wealth of information too numerous to describe as part of today's post. Please support the Parent Watch Organization, sign a petition. As informed consumer you can hopefully correctly handle a situation where it is your door that receives the knock knock joke, only thing is, it is no joke!

The Horror of Traveling Sales Crews Revisited and A Condemnation of the Modern Direct Selling Industry!

(The beautiful young girl in the picture to the right is the 18 year old daughter of Phil Ellenbecker, Malinda. She died on March 25, 1999 from a massive skull fracture when the van she was in flipped over twice while traveling at 81 mph. The crash near Janesville, Wisconsin left a total of 7 dead and 5 maimed for life. Phil's email to me is at the bottom of today's post. Please see the online memorial to her by clicking here. Make sure you have your speakers turned on because the beautiful music and words are very moving and brought tears to my eyes.)

Before the advent of the modern age, direct selling was a necessary and desired business model. Pioneers living out on the edge of the wilderness many times looked forward to that occasional peddler bringing any number of products and goods from the east to the homestead. General stores did not exactly put these peddlers out of business who began to specialize. Bible salesmen appeared as well as people selling hard to find beauty aids and various other hard to find items.

One of my favorite movies of the past few years was "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" where John Goodman played a disreputable Bible salesman in the Great Depression era who gave a good beating to two of the key characters of the movie with a tree limb and then squished a toad with his bare hand. This movie may have been a farce, but these types of direct selling characters really existed then and in many ways still exist today.

I see the modern age MLM sales tactics to be an evolution of these last century Bible salesmen who used questionable tactics and outright deceit to make the sale. These early Bible salesman, for instance, would prospect folks who had recently suffered a death in the family. They might approach a widow and con her into buying a Bible that they claimed their loved one had ordered before their untimely death.

Quixtar representatives are taught to size up their prospective "marks" in a similar fashion. The Quixtar training materials teach questionable methods to identify character flaws or weaknesses which will facilitate the sale of their plan which for the most part is a product based pyramid scheme con job. These modern day multi-level marketers like to call themselves direct sellers as if they were a throw back to the good old days of the homestead peddler. How often do you get a knock on the door and are asked to buy products offered by a MLM direct seller? Probably not very often because door to door selling is not generally done by MLM scam artists. These so called sellers are more interested in finding people who will sit down in front of their easel board and see the plan for making it big in their business by buying the products and recruiting others to do the same. This can hardly be considered direct selling but direct recruitment! Many of these MLM scam business people are not true direct sellers but hope to benefit by the self consumption of company products they hope to inspire the newly recruited rep to make.

What about the traveling sales crews who are actually direct sellers? Here again, there are many problems. The mostly young people on these sales crews are many times taken advantage of themselves by the company and people they work for while they go out and take advantage of the door to door residents who many times swallow deceitful claims and buy the magazine subscriptions and products. To make sales, these door to door sellers might claim that they live a few blocks away or are trying to work their way through school. People fall for these deceits the same way people seeing the Quixtar plan to success are also hoodwinked. Many times the Quixtar reps like to pass themselves off as Quixtar success stories sporting nice suits and jewelry. They may look the part, but are anything but successful; their appearance only furthering the deception. I have described how questionable misrepresentations are made to talk prospects into climbing aboard the Quixtar mother ship and how the training materials are basically propaganda to keep the new recruits buying the overpriced products, the training materials (known as tools) and believing in the success dream.

The traveling sales crews are despicable, the MLM schemes and scams represented by the DSA are despicable, and even the Vacuum selling industry (like Kirby and Rainbow) are fraught with problems and are considered despicable by many. There is very little good that can be said about modern day direct sellers or con artists which misrepresent themselves as direct sellers, a common thread that runs through them all.

There are different trade associations that represent all these businesses who hope to find some degree of respectability amongst one another. Of course there is the Direct Selling Association which Jon Taylor of the Consumer Awareness Institute believe have been infiltrated by questionable MLM product pyramid scheme companies like Amway, Herbalife, YourTravelBiz, and Mannatech. The traveling sales crew companies also have their own trade associations also which are described below by Mr Ellenbecker.

I realize that I made a earlier post which described the traveling sales industry, but I felt the industry should be revisited so I might provide readers with more information on this very questionable business which takes advantage of its recruits and encourages young people to leave parents, family and friends for a life on the road. These traveling sales crews many times are traveling dens of corruption, sex and drugs.

I received an email from Phil Ellenbecker who I am going to copy and paste directly below which links information related to the traveling sales industry that AGCI readers might want to further investigate. I support the efforts to expose any situation that takes advantage of young people and in some cases has directly or indirectly caused the death, rape and murder of these youths who are exposed daily to the dregs of society and dangers of the road. Parents and family are the secondary victims of these traveling caravans from hell as well as the people who open their door to some unsavory gypsy sellers.

********************************

To whom it may concern,

I would like to provide you with more information on Kirby, the Direct Selling Association, and 'traveling sales crews.'

Southwestern and the DSA:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/southwestern%20company.html

Southwestern and the DSA lobbying against a bill in Wisconsin to protect kids and homeowners
from the crimes committed by traveling sales crews:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/wisconsin%20legislation%202007.html

Kirby: a brief chronology of crimes:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/kirby%20vacuum%20crime%20research%20%20021908.htm
Traveling sales crews:
Specific to door to door magazine and cleaner sales:
Wanted Page:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/wanted.html

Traveling sales crews:
Specific to door to door magazine and cleaner sales:
http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/door%20to%20door%20sales%20profiles.html

Featured Articles:
Houston Press:
What Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know About Door-to-Door Magazine Sales:
http://houstonpress.com/2008-07-17/news/what-mainstream-publishers-don-t-want-you-to-know-about-door-to-door-magazine-sales/1
New York Times:
For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html?ex=1329714000&en=be91678aaac7038d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

New York Times:
Life on a magazine crew - Video
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=cc441f37425c1403e086b3f96ab5c21bf296dc36

Our battle to protect homeowners and children from the door to door sales industry is mainly focused
on the National Field Selling Association: www.nfsa.com the trade group for most of the magazine and cleaner door to door
sales companies, and the Magazine Publishers of America: http://www.magazine.org the trade group for most of the
magazine publishers in this country. Extreme crime and exploitation of children, young adults, and homeowners is occurring in this immoral
and corrupt industry.

The NFSA and the MPA are separate trade groups and not associated with the DSA.
However, the DSA, Kirby and Southwestern have now taken up arms against us and
legislation in the state of Wisconsin that was created to protect Wisconsin kids and homeowners
from crimes associated with the door to door sales industry.

Thank you for your article and your time.

Sincerely,
Phil Ellenbecker
Director
Dedicated Memorial Parents Group
www.travelingsalescrews.info
www.dedicatedmemorial.org