jeunesse-logoWith 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.

alex-morton-bk-boreyko-vemmaAmidst 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.

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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.

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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:

opportunity-event-alex-morton-jeunesse opportunity-event3-alex-morton-jeunesse opportunity-event2-alex-morton-jeunesse

Home events? Got those too:

home-events-alex-morton-jeunesse home-events3-alex-morton-jeunesse home-events2-alex-morton-jeunesse

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.

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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?

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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…