Friday, April 4, 2014

BREAKING NEWS: Dietary Supplement caused nearly 100 hepatitis cases

An outbreak of nearly 100 cases of hepatitis in Hawaii was pinpointed to be caused by one dietary supplement.  

But that's not the scary part. This is: 

Because the FDA regulates supplements only after they come to market, companies are not required to prove that their products are safe and effective before marketing them.
"This really points to the fact that there's no safety testing … before a new ingredient shows up in a supplement in the United States," Cohen said. "Guess who's the experimental animal — the consumer."
livescience.com

So if you are taking one such dietary supplement, one that's brand new and never tested...

You may want to reevaluate that risk.

Esp. when it is based on junk science or even worse bogosities.

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BREAKING NEWS: SEC is apparently well aware of TelexFree, according to court filings

When SEC subpoenaed "Stephen Huntsman", a potential conspirator in the WCM ponzi scheme which SEC recently obtained a total bank freeze on, SEC lawyers asked Huntsman what is his relation to TelexFree (if any), and he replied he had none, though he did admit to be employed by Phil Ming Xu of WCM ponzi and related entities.

This means SEC is well aware of TelexFree as a potential scam. Expect action on the Federal level soon.

Thanks to PatrickPretty for spotting this
http://patrickpretty.com/2014/04/04/telexfrees-name-appears-in-federal-court-filings-in-the-secs-pyramid-and-ponzi-case-against-wcm777/


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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Scam Psychology: Charlie Munger on How You Screw Up: Part 3 of 6

Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You may have heard of Charlie Munger. But if you haven't, you should have heard of his partner: Warren Buffet, one of the 5 richest man in the world.  In 1995, Charlie Munger gave a speech at Harvard... about how people misjudge things. Here's my personal interpretation of his lessons, as applied to network marketing. You can read the full speech.  Please also check out the previous sections 1-4, and 5-8

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In the speech given at Harvard in 1995, Charlie Munger identified what he called "24 standard causes of human misjudgment." What he really meant is "24 reasons why you screw up".  Here is 9 through 12

9) Failure to Recognize Contrast Bias

Contrast bias is simple to explain... If I give you one item and ask you to rate it, you will give your honest opinion. However, if I have you rate that item, plus an HORRIBLE item, that original item will be rated higher, on the average, because there's a contrasting item.

Here's a simple experiment by Professor Cialdini. Two buckets of water, one quite cold, one quite hot (neither will actually harm). Volunteers are asked to put one hand in hot water and one hand in cold water for 5-10 seconds. Then both are removed and placed in the same bucket of water. The hand what was in hot water now feels cold, and the hand what was in cold water now feels warm/hot, but they are feeling the SAME bucket of water. It's the contrast that makes the water feel hot or cold.

And this experience shows up everywhere. It's often recommended in some pickup artistry books that you bring along an ugly friend or two to make yourself look better. This is the same idea: contrast.

A somewhat anecdotal and apocryphal real estate sales technique if you want to get rid of a not-so-good property is you show the prospects two really awful properties, have them go tsk-tsk and shake their head, then you take them to this "better" property, and they'll probably bite.

On the flip side, without a contrast or a measure against a neutral background (control group), you may not be aware of creeping changes. This can be termed "anti-contrast bias".

Then there's the "boiled frog" urban legend, where the claim is if you put a frog in a pot of water, but you cook it VERY VERY slowly, the frog will never jump out. It's not true, but it's an interesting legend and illustrates this point. You can "creep" in changes and if the movement is small enough it may escape notice.

So beware of this being used on you... Either a special contrast example is used to make a position to look better or worse than it really is... this coercing a bias, or someone tried to "creep" in some changes and rely on your momentum bias to say nothing.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

BREAKING NEWS: TelexFree Sheeple Turned Lion, "occupied" TelexFree until police showed up

According to various Youtube videos, all published today, a bunch of Telexfree sheeple apparently grew spines and decided to occupy Telexfree office, much like they did a few weeks ago, when Steve Labriola basically told them to leave, and back then they did. This time they won't take no for an answer, and Labriola apparently was not able to control the crowd. Police was called and there was no violence, but basically all TelexFree folks hid in the backoffice and left police, outside, who told people to get organized, and hire a lawyer, and complain to attorney general and state senators and reps and congresspeople.

Thanks for BehindMLM for the coverage, where you can also see the videos.

This is how sheeple no longer be sheeple, folks... by asking real questions and demand real answers, instead of PR fluff.
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Monday, March 31, 2014

Bad Propaganda: How TelexFree just made a liar out of itself... and all if its affiliates

Around March 18, 2014, Rwanda declared TelexFree to be a money laundering fraud cartel.

TelexFree's response: "That's not me!"  Quoting from their own press release:
TelexFREE says, "As far as we can tell, this has nothing to do with us other than the fact that somebody is making illegal use of our name.  We have in the neighborhood of half a million customers worldwide, and 121 of them are in Rwanda.  But we have no connection with P.L.I. Telexfree Rwanda Ltd., the company shutdown in Rwanda.  That company allegedly has been in business for 14 years, whereas we just celebrated our second year in business. We've checked our records and find no evidence of the names of the persons associated with that company registered as either our customers or agents. Rwanda wasn't on our radar until this report hit the Internet."
Well, what does Google say? If you search for "telexfree 14 year", you'll get... 444000 results. Some are just news, let's filter those out. What you are left with... Are the people selling TelexFree... and they ALL say "TelexFree company is a 14 year old American company"... with a few variations, but same thing.


If TelexFree promoters around the world... say TelexFree is 14 year old, and the company itself says it's only 2-year old...

Clearly one side must be wrong. Given that TelexFree's locations are lies, and they are already delcared illegal in Brazil and under investigation elsewhere, clearly the press release is a total fabrication.

And the willingness of TelexFree to roll all of their affiliates under the bus (you are all liars!) is rather... appalling, even to a bystander.

And that's why you should NEVER believe anything published through PRNewswire.
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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Scam Psychology: When They Say "Ignore Negativity", They Really Meant "Ignore Me".

Scammers often trot out the "ignore negativity" in order to train you, like Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate at ringing of the bell instead of at actual food, to ignore criticism against his or her scheme.

This is how you *should* react to such stupid suggestion. Thanks to Dilbert, 30-MAR-2014


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