Is Alex Morton pulling another Vemma over at Jeunesse?
With the FTC alleging Vemma is a $200 illegal pyramid scheme, a big question mark now hangs over the credibility of their top income-earners.
To what extent are they complicit in the fraud carried out? How much are they responsible? How much did they earn and should they be made to return the funds they defrauded consumers out of?
Today we take a look at perhaps the most prominent of examples, former Vemma poster-boy Alex Morton.
Amidst a sea of controversy, Alex Morton left Vemma to join Jeunesse a few weeks ago.
This saw Vemma owner B.K. Boreyko issue veiled threats against Morton. Morton didn’t directly respond to Boreyko’s criticism, but has instead been flooding Facebook with promotional activity for Jeunesse.
As I read through the FTC’s complaint against Vemma, and within the context of Alex Morton’s involvement in Vemma, a few paragraphs about the promotion of Vemma stood out.
Vemma’s marketing efforts include a campaign called the “YPR”, “Young People Revolution” or “Young Professional Revolution”, which targets young adults, including college students.
Vemma’s YPR marketing materials prominently feature young, seemingly affluent individuals surrounded by conspicuous displays of wealth, such as luxury vehicles, jets and yachts.
Alex Morton is arguably the architect of the YPR, and prior to leaving Vemma was often credited as a “YPR Ambassador”.
At the very least, Morton was the prime driving force behind YPR and through the marketing campaign has made millions of dollars.
How?
Defendants promote the Vemma program through a variety of channels, including websites, videos, testimonials, print materials, social media tools and live presentations and meetings, such as “opportunity events” and “home events”.
Opportunity events are meetings designed to motivate train affiliates and to recruit new affiliates.
High-level affiliates … typically host these events in hotel ballrooms conference rooms, or convention centers around the country.
Home events are smaller recruitment meetings at an affiliate’s residence, dorm room, park or other location.
Through each of these channels, consumers (are) pressured to become Vemma affiliates and to recruit others, including friends and family members, to do the same.
At the core of the FTC’s complaint against Vemma is a lack of retail sales driving the business, with Vemma instead relying primarily on monthly autoship orders of recruited affiliates to generate revenue.
Within the Jeunesse business model, the same is entirely possible. And upon perusal of Morton’s Facebook activity over the past few weeks, alarm bells should be going of at Jeunesse corporate.
If I may, the following isn’t ancient history but rather posts taken directly from Morton’s Facebook feed over the last few days – juxtaposed with excerpts from the FTC’s complaint.
Vemma’s marketing efforts include a campaign called the “YPR”, “Young People Revolution” or “Young Professional Revolution”, which targets young adults.
In Jeunesse, Morton is spearheading what he calls #GenYoung.
Vemma’s YPR marketing materials prominently feature young, seemingly affluent individuals surrounded by conspicuous displays of wealth, such as luxury vehicles, jets and yachts.
No jets and yachts yet, but it is of course still early days.
Defendants promote the Vemma program through a variety of channels, including websites, videos, testimonials, print materials, social media tools and live presentations and meetings, such as “opportunity events” and “home events”.
Opportunity events? Plenty of those:
Home events? Got those too:
A number of posts on Morton’s Facebook page congratulate his downline for achieving various affiliate ranks within the Jeunesse compensation plan.
The bulk of these affiliates are at the “Executive” and “Jade” rank.
As per the Jeunesse compensation plan, the qualification requirements for the Executive and Jade ranks are as follows:
Executive: To achieve the rank of Executive, you must first become a Distributor, and then have personally enrolled 2 Distributors (1 in each team) who have each generated 100 PV in one month within one year of joining.
You must be a Qualified Executive with 4 personally enrolled Executives (minimum of 1 in each team) or 8 personally enrolled Distributors (minimum of 3 in each team) who have each generated 100 PV in one month.
Being an “active” Jeunesse affiliate means
you must generate 60 PV points during your Autoship Month.
What’s an “autoship month”?
The Autoship Month is the period of time during which you are responsible for meeting your PV requirements and maintaining your rank qualifications.
How do you “maintain” those “PV requirement”? By signing up for monthly autoship of course.
Once a Jeunesse affiliate qualifies as an Executive, they are “qualified to earn Team Commissions”, or in other words the MLM side of the compensation plan kicks in.
Why is this important?
Because like Vemma, in Jeunesse it’s entirely possible to qualify for these ranks and generate commissions via signing up as a Jeunesse affiliate, placing a monthly autoship order for 100 PV and then recruiting others who do the same.
The very thing the FTC just busted Vemma for doing.
Don’t believe me? Go read up on the FTC’s complaint against Vemma and then tell me Alex Morton isn’t rebuilding the exact same thing now in Jeunesse.
Whether or not Jeunesse management do anything about it remains to be seen. In the meantime though, the FTC have requested a Receiver be appointed in the Vemma case.
Should that go ahead, I’d be very surprised if Alex Morton wasn’t one of the first to be sued under clawback litigation.
Again, what that means for Jeunesse is entirely up to Jeunesse management – but for now all I’m hearing is crickets…
Have you attended one of Alex Morton’s recent Jeunesse opportunity meetings? Was it all about signing up your friends and family and getting them on a monthly autoship order?
Or better yet if you’re already in Morton’s #GenYoung downline, how many sales to retail customers have you made? Are you qualifying for commissions via your own monthly product order? How many downline affiliates have you recruited whose sole activity in Jeunesse each month is the purchase of a monthly product order?
Or ignore this post, tell yourself it’s a paid article, that I work for a Jeunesse competitor, that you’re “#GenYoung strong”, that this is all just rumours, lies and nonsense, or whatever else you have to tell yourself to push an FTC lawsuit to the back of your mind.
Just don’t say nobody spoke up and made you aware of the issues when the time comes…
It is sites like yours Mr. oz which helps expose and hopefully stop money sucking vampires like Alex Morton.
It’s the ONLY thing Mortons know how to do… recruit, recruit, recruit. You don’t really expect old dogs to learn new tricks, do you?
Thank you for helping to expose these pyramid schemes!
Actually, in Jeunesse, you can generate PV strictly off of customer orders (similar to any retail chain) and its strongly encouraged by the corporate training staff.
This article is informative, but very misleading logistically. Vemma had a very wear retail program in place which caused this type of action amongst reps.
We Nedd more like Alex Morton to get this country back to the people …
@J
That was possible in Vemma too (after the change last year).
But having come from Vemma, in which there was no retail, do you really think Morton and the crew are making retail sales?
Of course not. They’re just recruiting affiliates on autoship, the same as they did in Vemma.
Having retail as an option for pseudo-compliance isn’t good enough, retail sales need to actually be made.
Which is why Jeunesse refer to an affiliate’s commission qualification period as “autoship month”. Please.
@Ian
Didn’t you hear? pretty much everyone lost money in Vemma, with Alex Morton playing a lage role in that.
That’s not “giving the country back to the people”, it’s “giving money to Alex Morton”.
It is time for leaders within the MLM Industry to come clean or the FTC will clean-their-clocks for them.
Back in 1985, I attended an MLM company convention where the Top Money-earner introduced himself and asked everyone in the room to “remind him to tell them the 3 secrets to building a successful MLM organization” before he left the stage.
So, this high-profile MLM distributor finished his 45-minute speech and started to walk off the stage and the entire crowd started shouting to the speaker to come back and reveal the 3 “secrets”
I know most of the veterans of MLM know where I am going with this but for the benefit of the newbies, here are the 3 “secrets”
The top money-earner acknowledge the frantic crowds reminder, slowly walked back to the chalkboard and wrote these word:
3 SECRETS TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION
1.
2.
3.
Then, he turned around and faced the crowd and said, “The first thing you need to do in order to be successful in MLM and grow a huge organization is to “recruit” new distributors.
However, some people forget the next important activity and that is….. Drum-roll please……. “recruit new distributors”
And finally, and probably most important, “recruit new distributors?
He went on to say that we are NOT SALESPEOPLE. We are PROFESSIONAL INVITERS. We invite friends, family and business contacts to EVENTS and let our UPLINE do the talking.
What is the point to all of this? That MLM Model Is Broken and the FTC appears to be taking action now.
Will this become a “tidal wave” or just a routine “high tide” followed by a period of no action?
I checked out a few Top Distributors Facebook pages today and a lot of them are saying things like,
To the MLM money-gammers I ask this question, “Are you sober yet?”
no wonder you lose money and are broke.
I read online that distributors can sign-up for a monthly autoship and pay $126 for 2 – 32 oz bottles of Verve with Vemma.
So, this is the discounted “wholesale price” that distributor. Let’s do the math:
Vemma Energy Drink – Verve, $126 divided by 64 = $1.96 / Fl Oz
Red Bull Energy Drink, 8.4-Fluid Ounce Cans, 24 Pack on Amazon and Pay as low as $32.22 ($0.16 / Fl Oz)
$1.96 vs $0.16 for an energy drink.
Turns out, this is less about buying an energy drink and more about DRINKING THE KOOL-AID.
Is that true? Wow that is some expensive stuff!
Wait a minute… Verve cans are also 8.4 oz. So Verve should be $0.23 / floz
I did the math last year. I got $2.83 / can for Verve, $1.60 / can for Red Bull.
NOLINK://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2014/07/due-diligence-how-to-read-income.html
I stand (actually sitting in front of computer) corrected!
tried checking the price but the Vemma sites were down.
I VERVE! 1 pack(24 8oz cans): Regular or Sugarfree 68.95
24 x 8.4 oz = 202 oz Total divided into $68.95 = 0.34 per oz
Red Bull Energy Drink, 8.4-Fluid Ounce Cans, 24 Pack on Amazon and Pay as low as $32.22 ($0.16 / Fl Oz)
So, we are talking DOUBLE the price. Plus, most people go to their local grocery store every week and can just add the Red Bull to their cart.
However, with Vemma, they have to add the cost of shipping to get a fair price comparison.
Anyone know how much Vemma charges to ship those 24 cans to the customer?
Since we know that most people do not see themselves as sales types, how are they going to sell a product that is DOUBLE THE PRICE of what is already being purchased for less?
You got it! They can’t. Which is the reason they SELL THE OPPORTUNITY with the product being just the sideshow.
And that is a fact.
Thanks for catching my error in calculations K Chang.
I didn’t add shipping for Amazon because of their FREE shipping option on purchases that exceed $35.
At worst case, the customer could pay a little more and qualify for single item FREE shipping option.
I found this pricing for Redbull – Price: $37.91 ($0.19 / Fl Oz) & FREE Shipping.
It looks like they will be going after promotional bonus based companies. A wake up call for those people.
For those trying to do a cost comparison with Red Bull, you are obviously missing the entire concept of Vemma.
The clinically studied nutritional supplement Vemma cost about $2.00 per serving, if you purchased the stand alone Vemma product.
Verve has the same 2 ounces of Vemma, plus the components of the energy drink. Yes the price is about $2.80 a can, but $2.00 is the Vemma supplement. So the energy drink component is really only $.83.
You show me where red bull has 12 vitamins, 63 minerals, mangosteen, aloe vera and green tea. Show me where Red Bull paid 250000 to run full clinical studies to see exactly what happened in your blood after drinking it.
Until you can show me that trying to compare the to is like comparing a Ford Fiesta to a Ford Mustang. They are both Fords (energy drinks), but they are not the same thing and they dont cost the same thing.
Lip-service or the real McCoy?
Alex Morton, Facebook 2hrs ago.
waaaaaaaay over the top horseshit. Legitimate salon products are expensive enough, no way they try to sell even more expensive voodoo.
he has to make it look like he’s retailing since he’s being watched.
Minerals such as platinum, lead, paladium, and other heavy metals. Have you tried asking WHICH 63 minerals? Because it’s NO LONGER on your label. Google it to find the original label.
Vemma only made public TWO trials, one involving 79 people for a few weeks, mostly seniors, and another trial of about 20 students, both in China. Both relied on SELF-REPORTING (i.e. “I felt better”) I’ve read both studies. Did you?
There is NO CONCLUSIVE or even CONSENSUS proof that mangosteen is good for you. You’re just repeating PR statements by rote. You are indeed highly trained.
@ K Chang
MLM’ers want to bring their OWN FACTS to the discussion. You just handed Travis his hat as your response might be the best answer yet to an MLMer trying to justify their high prices with their “special ingredients” bull$hit.
I sure hope Anjali doesn’t see your post.
He can eat his hat… 😉 It’s not my first time tangling with Vembots.
Here’s my full take on the little tangle, with more citings.
amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2015/09/scam-tactic-speak-in-half-truths-or-how.html
Of course, the next question is: are those vitamins and minerals actually inside the can, or has Vemma simply quoted what’s in the ingredients BEFORE they go through the processes required to convert ingredient into drink ??
Unless Vemma can produce documented evidence of independent testing of the products “as they leave the can” what we have is a product possibly processed within an inch of its’ life with little or no “usable” nutritional value
Correction. 1st study is 59 people, not 79. It did rely on self-reporting on feeling, but there’s apparently some sort of blood test done on CRP levels, except Vemma made up the level of high vs. low.
Vemma claimed 1 mg/L is high when US Middle-Age average is 1.5 mg/L, and American Heart Association says more than 3 mg/L is high. (Vemma’s number goes from 1.8 to 0.9 after drinking stuff)
The 2nd study, using 20 students, actually did involve some blood tests. However, the study also concluded that they can’t find any proof that mangosteen, aloe, and the extra vitamins they packed into the drink had any effect on the ORAC values (furthermore ORAC values bear no relations to actual bioavailability, as per FDA)
malaysia banned jeunesse?
amlmskeptic.blogspot.com.br/2015/10/breaking-news-jeunesse-banned-in.html
I tried some Malaysian proxies to replicate the message. The Jeunesse Global website redirected me to “jeunessemy.com” and went through.
I’m not sure if the redirect has been put in place after the main site was blocked… Jeunessemy.com was only registered on the 29th of August 2015.