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Holly Michels Seventeen multi-level companies took advantage of an amnesty offering from the state auditor's office to come into compliance with state law and pay reduced fines. The amnesty period ended Wednesday, and the companies that came into compliance had about 4,200 Montanans participating in their operations. "This is a win for Montana consumers. By filing with our agency, we can review the company's application and confirm that they are not running an illegal pyramid scheme," state Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Troy Downing said in a press release this week. "... We will hold non-compliant companies responsible if they do not comply with Montana law." The companies that filed during the amnesty period include: Life Platform, Auvoria Prime, Breathless Wines, Chalk Couture, Epicure, Faberlic Inc., Farmas...

After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the world in March 2020, consumers moved to various forms of digital payments. PayPal ( PYPL -2.40% ) was one of the primary benefactors of this movement, and its stock price reached a high of $310 in July 2021 from investor excitement. After growth began to slow and pandemic-era stocks fell out of favor, shares tumbled over 60% to around $115 -- a price last reached in April 2020. Investors may be significantly underwater depending on when shares were purchased and wondering if it's worth holding on to the company. I believe the market reaction is significantly overblown and PayPal could be a great stock to own over the next three to five years. Image source: Getty Images. Total payment volume continues to rise Throughout 2021, total payment volume (TPV) across all PayPal platforms -- like PayPal itself, Venmo, and Zettle -- rose 33% to $1.3 trillion. Prior to the pandemic in 2019, PayPal only processed...

Everyone's seen the tantalizing ads: "Work from home!" "Build your own business!" "Set your own schedule, be your own boss!" with promises of pay as high as $20 per hour. Even around campus, students have fallen for this seemingly easy way to make cash. The ultra-glam lifestyle of these "#bossbabes" makes working like this seem like a dream. Private concerts with Kelly Clarkson and Selena Gomez, free cruises and the promise of powerful female friendships were displayed across recruiting flyers. For some women who have managed to escape the clutches of this work, it was more like a nightmare. Recently, multi-level marketing (MLM) companies have been making the headlines due to the nature of their exploitative practices being brought to light. MLMs rely on a hierarchical structure (jokingly referred to as pyramid schemes by netizens), wherein constant recruitment is essential to keep the company afloat. The average worker recruits employees...

Criminal Justice December 8, 2021 By Jacob Maslow The many forms and sizes of pyramid schemes often make them difficult to recognize at the start. However, they all share one dominant characteristic: the promise of large profits to investors on recruiting others. Sometimes a product is used to disguise the pyramid scheme. Ponzi schemes are closely related to pyramid schemes. However, they don't offer profits but are based on collecting payments from people, promising a high rate of return on their investment over a short-term period. Typically, they take money from new investors to pay off older ones. Both schemes manage to seduce people initially. However, they are illegal because they inevitably fall apart, with the investors or consumers at the bottom levels losing the most. These are some of the most famous pyramid schemes in U.S. history: 1.      Koscot Interplanetary Koscot Interplanetary was a company from Orlando, Florida, sel...

DEDHAM, Mass. — The websites advertise you can "be your own boss" and "work from anywhere" because it's the "perfect side hustle…to build a rock-solid residual income." Multi-level marketing is a billion dollar industry and one of its selling points is that it's easy to make money. "It's not easy. It should be simple but not easy. It requires work," said Jody Chase, a network marketer at the Rhode Island-based MLM company Pure Haven. Chase said she can earn $15,000 to $20,000 a month from the sale of Pure Haven's health and body products, largely because she has around 2,500 people working "downline" from her in a sales network. Of those 2,500 people, Chase estimates only around 10 earn a livable income. "My goal isn't to create '6 figure earners,' Chase said. "It's literally to create 'thousand-aires,' because that's the goal for most people, [earning] $300 to $1000 a month," C...

(Charlene Rhinehart, CPA) Standing on the lower end of the income scale has its perks. Although making six figures may sound more glamourous, there are tax benefits that are reserved for those with lower incomes. If you qualify, you may be eligible to earn money from your investments without paying a dime in taxes. This is one benefit attached to buying dividend-paying stocks. If you're on the hunt for more tax-free income, dividend stock investing may get you one step closer to your goal. The perks are even sweeter if you are married. Below, we'll break down the qualifications to skip taxes on your dividend income in 2022. Image source: Getty Images. Dividends can be your best friend Dividends don't always get the praise they deserve, but they can come in handy when you're looking to earn extra income. Dividends represent the money given to you by companies that reward their shareholders with a portion of their profits. ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Zelle Scammers Target Clients at Another Big Firm with Phishing Scheme    AdvisorHub

You may have heard that MLMs are very very  similar to pyramid schemes, and yet you probably know someone you love and trust who sells for one and assures you it is simply a direct sales model, and if you are going to buy skincare from a store, why not buy it from a friend? So which is the truth? Well, both, actually.  According to investopedia, "MLM encourages existing members to promote and sell their offerings to other individuals and bring on new recruits into the business. Distributors are paid a percentage of their recruits' sales. New recruits become the distributor's network or downline and are, in turn, encouraged to make sales to earn money." What this means is that while a portion of consultants' income does come from directly selling products to their customers, the only way for them to make a  lot  of money is to recruit more and more people underneath them to also sell products, and collect a portion of those p...

Wouldn't it be nice if you could block all robocalls before you even have the chance to pick them up? Wireless carriers continue to improve their technology to stop unwanted calls, but a record number of scam calls continue to get through. Illegal and spoofed robocalls continue to be the number one complaint to the FCC. But today the scams continue, and that's because scammers are making huge amounts of money. According to Truecaller's latest numbers, phone scammers stole $29.8 billion from victims in 12 months. One network carrier T-Mobile, in its 2021 Scam and Robocall Report identified more than 21 billion scam calls in 2021. When you break that number down, that's 700 calls identified or blocked every second in 2021. The most common scam call in 2021, according to the carrier's report, involved fake car warranties. The report also shows in 2021, there was a 116% increase in scam attempts when it comes to robocalls. With T-Mobile, it offers Scam ID and Scam Blo...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Best Real Money Online Casinos For Gambling In The US    Miami Herald

[unable to retrieve full-text content] New Ventures Maine announces tuition-free online classes in managing money, building careers, and starting businesses    The County

I am sure you have heard of Avon and Tupperware, and you may even have their products in your home. Both of these companies are referred to as multilevel marketing companies, or MLMs. Multilevel marketing is a strategy used by some direct sales companies encouraging existing participants to promote and sell their products and services to other individuals and bring new recruits into the business. MLMs are similar in structure to pyramid schemes, but with the essential difference that an MLM is considered a legitimate business enterprise and a pyramid is a scheme to defraud. Understanding this difference is paramount for investors. MLMs provide products and services to consumers through direct sales channels. Under the pyramid structure of an MLM, participants both sell the product or service and recruit new members to the sales team. As each participant in the MLM expands their team, each level below continues to expand—from one person on level one to three people on level two...

Meme Image from Rick and Morty(8/30/2015) Season 2, Episode 6; The Ricks Must Be Crazy After a couple of years of studying Bitcoin and the U.S. dollar that I was raised to trust like it was some faceless god, I eventually started valuing everything in Bitcoin's satoshis instead of the U.S. dollar. The biggest reason wasn't because of Bitcoin either. It was the U.S. dollar's system that did it to me. Once I learned what the system was and how it functioned, I could no longer value anything in dollars after realizing how fast they were exponentially losing value. A Dollar's Worth (Source: Visual Capitalist) The U.S. dollar is a system that is burning up its own value with every new dollar that is digitally issued and shoved into the bank accounts of the top 1% of the world. It is shoved into their accounts whenever they need to get a new bank bailout loan or corporate bond loan. They then take that new money and freeze it into their own portfolio's asset holdings. Jum...

In the comments of the video and elsewhere online, Madison's followers and downlines (the people below her in her Young Living business) expressed total shock. To understand their feelings, you have to know just how sweet the Vinings' Young Living gig was. Madison and Tyler had "Royal Crown Diamond" status in Young Living, which meant they were among the most successful consultants in the company. According to the company's 2019 statistics, Royal Crown Diamond sellers made an average of $1,645,692 annually, or roughly $137,000 a month. This revenue, of course, is mostly made up of sales generated by the Vinings' team, the Happy Oilers, who made the base of the, let's say, pyramid-shaped structure the couple sat on the top of. By quitting Young Living, Madison and Tyler are walking away from it all, and they will need to rebuild their team from scratch. To many, the move made no sense. "My head hurts trying to understand. Walking away from over a milli...

I am sure you have heard of Avon and Tupperware, and you may even have their products in your home. Both of these companies are referred to as multilevel marketing companies, or MLMs. Multilevel marketing is a strategy used by some direct sales companies encouraging existing participants to promote and sell their products and services to other individuals and bring new recruits into the business. MLMs are similar in structure to pyramid schemes, but with the essential difference that an MLM is considered a legitimate business enterprise and a pyramid is a scheme to defraud. Understanding this difference is paramount for investors. MLMs provide products and services to consumers through direct sales channels. Under the pyramid structure of an MLM, participants both sell the product or service and recruit new members to the sales team. As each participant in the MLM expands their team, each level below continues to expand—from one person on level one to three people on level two...

Network marketing , known as direct sales , network marketing or multilevel , is the one to which companies that offer their products or services directly to the consumer are engaged through distributors or independent entrepreneurs, avoiding mass advertising and eliminating the intermediaries chain of a traditional distribution system. A business model with many advantages Network marketing is a business model that among the advantages for those who undertake it is that it has a very low start-up cost with a great income potential. Some of the best known globally are Amway, Herbalife, Tupperware, and Avon. These four companies, in 2019, registered more than US $ 20,000 million in sales. TIP: Get our latest content by  joining our newsletter . Don't miss out on   news that matter  in Costa Rica . Click here . In Costa Rica, some of these companies are associated with ACEVED, the Costa Rican Association of Direct Selling Companies . The 20 partners are: ...