The California Attorney’s General office raised the red flags on YTB, aka Your Travel Biz, recently with a 25 million dollar law suit. Now mlmwatchdog reports that a 100 million dollar class action law suit has been filed by a St. Louis legal firm and that the Illinois AG is working with the California AG.

MLM Watchdog Story

The red flags were being rasised on YTB long ago. There is no reason anyone should be caught off guard. Check out this link. Reality Check

Critical thinking network marketers that I know had no problem seeing the red flags right away years ago.

Possibly even YTB realized their fate prior to the California AG’s law suit, as they notified the public of plans to change from network marketing to a franchise system. Major red flag announcement.

Franchise Info

What should be of concern to the network marketing  community is the bad light that is put on us when these situations arise. The public and even many network marketers do not understand that there is no such thing as an illegal network marketing pay plan. If a pay plan is illegal, then it is not network marketing. It is only an illegal pay plan disguised as a network marketing pay plan.

From one angle, we are happy to see the government take action. But on the other hand, people associate them with us. Even worse, there are many more still in business.

Can people make money in these illegal plans? Yes, and some people will make huge amounts of money. But many will lose, and the longer one is allowed to exist, the more people will lose and the worse they make the network marketing industry look. What if the government just let them be? They typically do for a while. It takes time and money to investigate and prepare for a law suit.

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“YourTravelBiz.com operates a gigantic pyramid scheme that is immensely profitable to a few individuals on top and a complete rip-off for most everyone else,” Attorney General Brown said. “Today’s lawsuit seeks to shut down the company’s unlawful operation before more people are exploited by the scam.”

The above quote comes directly from the office of the Attorney General for the State of California. You can view the news release here…. http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1596&

Knowledgeable people in the network marketing industry immediately reported, YTB, or Your Travel Biz, as being a pyramid when they first looked at the program. The same was true of Burnlounge, another publicly traded illegal pyramid. When they were sued, they terminated the MLM program within days in hopes of surviving. Note that YTB had just last month announced plans to change to a franchised based pay plan. See http://www.ytb.com/downloads/franchiseInfo.pdf

What should be of concern to many people, is that the compensation plan which is the reason the company is being called an illegal pyramid scheme is very similar to many other network marketing companies. If you look at companies with products or services with a very low margin of profit, you will likely see a similar compensation plan.

So if you are in or planning to join a program, be sure to check it out. Types of companies with low profit margin products and services using a compensation plan that pays mostly for recruiting of people include many MLM travel companies, MLM electric service companies and technology based companies such as long distance service.

The bigger each of these companies get, the more people get scammed. The more people that get scammed, the more complaints come into a state’s Attorney’s General office. The more complaints, the more likely it is that the AG will investigate. With a presidential election year in progress, fewer complaints are needed to catch the attention of the AG’s.

For more information on this subject, go to the website of a well known MLM distributor rights protector, Rod Cook. The site is MLM Watchdog

Check out other articles while you are there. You just may be surprised what is going on in this industry in plain view that you should know about.

Network Marketing is the greatest industry in the world. We just need to eliminate the pyramids and the scams. It all comes down to your education. Get one before it costs you for not being educated.

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