The Isagenix Amazon retail racket receipts
Last week we reported on a lawsuit alleging Isagenix corporate were in on a secret Amazon/eBay retail racket.
A few days after news of the lawsuit broke, Isagenix co-founder Jim Coover appeared on a leadership call to deny the allegations.
Today we examine evidence that suggests otherwise.
Before we get started, the parties you’ll see in the screenshots below are as follows:
- Bryan Lund – Co-Plaintiff and in the screenshots anything on the right
- Scott Christensen – Co-Plaintiff with Lund
- Jay Bennett – Isagenix’s third top earner when Lund was recruited, then rose to top earner within the company
- Isagenix corporate – namely Isagenix’s Compliance Department
- Jennifer Rodriguez – part of Bennett’s immediate downline and introduces herself as “Jay’s assistant”
As per Lund’s and Christensen’s complaint, Lund joined Isagenix on the proviso Isagenix corporate was on board.
This began in October 2017:
As detailed in the complaint, the first attempt at selling Isagenix on Amazon and eBay came to an abrupt halt a few months later.
At Bennett’s insistence, and representation he’d smoothed things over with Isagenix corporate, the original plan was restarted in early 2019 (around the date of Jennifer Rodriguez reaching out above).
In introducing herself, Rodriguez suggested one of her responsibilities was making sure Bennett’s downline maintained product orders.
This was done to ensure Bennett continued to qualify for commissions:
The Amazon racket ruse saw Rodriguez, on behalf of Bennett, create a bunch of customer and distributor accounts to order product through:
Email addresses and phone numbers used to generate these accounts appear to have been created on demand:
The names of the accounts, at least in part appear to be real people. To that end contracts were drawn up governing who got paid what:
As per the terms of the confidential agreements, patsies allowed Bennett to use their created Isagenix accounts to push Amazon racket product through.
In exchange, Bennett paid them a non-refundable initial payment of $25,000. Another $25,000 was paid when the account was promoted to Executive.
The terms of the contracts were for eleven months. For the duration of the contract, Bennett was then responsible for paying Lund weekly Isagenix checks.
Initially, individual delivery addresses were used to ship Isaganix products ordered through these accounts to. Lund then organized collection of the product.
Using this method, thousands of dollars were spent ordering Isagenix products:
VISA gift cards were used to purchase the product. The suspicious nature of the transactions was sometimes enough to trigger VISA’s in house security:
At one point Lund joked about selling a Ferrari to continue funding the racket:
Picking up thousands of dollars in orders from multiple addresses proved cumbersome. Eventually Lund came to the realization that, if he was to continue, it was be on the proviso one address would be used.
Bennett smoothed the request over with corporate, resulting in racket orders being sent to the same Utah address (click to enlarge):
Bennett also smoothed over the need for gift cards, allowing Rodriguez to order products across multiple accounts through one credit card.
Lund claims this went on for seven months, and that he has thousands of same-address invoices.
It’s important to note that this is not possible without an override on Isagenix’s end.
That brings us to communication between Bennett and Isagenix corporate, which began as early as October 2017:
Note that the above example is from the first failed Amazon racket attempt. Bennett however continued to smooth things over with Isagenix compliance the second time around:
For reasons unknown, on or around August 2019 Isagenix’s Compliance Department wanted out of whatever arrangement Bennett had going.
This prompted an August 28th email to Scott Christensen, who worked with Lund, from Kymberly Valenzuela, Director of Isagenix Global Compliance.
The email pertained to verifying details of the bogus accounts Jennifer Rodriguez had set up for the racket.
As you know, we have worked with you extensively over the last few months to bring the accounts within compliance.
In addition, we need your assurance that the products are not ending up on Amazon or similar sites.
If we do become aware of products being sold on such sites, we will terminate the associated accounts.
After Friday August 30th, Isagenix will be removing duplicate credit cards from all accounts other than the individual account holder and will be blocking access to accounts we are not able to confidently validate in the manner indicated above.
Jay Bennett was CC’d in on the email. In a followup September 6th email to Lund, Bennett stated;
the company is shutting your positions down – it’s out of my control – wanted you to get clarity on compliance direction – ( read below ). Jb
Beyond that, Lund couldn’t get an answer as to what went wrong.
Despite the evidence provided above, Jim Coover maintains “there is no truth” to Lund’s and Christensen’s allegations.
Isagenix has never actively promoted products on Amazon or encouraged others to do the same.
The validity of Coover’s statement above is thrown into question by an Amazon seller response from iServe.
In response to a query on how they were getting away with selling Isagenix products on Amazon, iServe stated they were “an authorized seller partnering directly with Isagenix”.
That was July 2019, during the time Bennett’s own Isagenix Amazon racket was operating.
iServe stating they were partnered directly with Isagenix suggests an agreement with corporate.
iServe is an Utah based Amazon seller with 42,834 ratings.
The company’s address is shared with Pattern, who claim to be a
leading player in ecommerce intelligence, sales optimization, marketplace management, and global expansion.
If Isagenix had an agreement with iServe, it appears they no longer do. Although they clearly once were, at the time of publication iServe are not selling any Isagenix inventory on Amazon.
Isagenix dismantling Jay Bennett’s Amazon racket saw Lund and Christensen terminated as distributors.
Bennett, an individual defendant in the lawsuit, is still a top earner within Isagenix. To the best of my knowledge neither Bennett or Rodriguez were reprimanded for their conduct.
How widespread the practice of creating and managing bogus customer/distributor accounts is within Isagenix’s top earners in unclear.
One of the allegations raised in Lund’s and Christensen’s lawsuit is that Bennett told them
the top 10 Isagenix distributors had been approved for internet resale as long as they did not allow other distributors to be aware and “kept it under the radar”.
Jim Coover has stated Isagenix intends to file a motion to dismiss the filed complaint.
Sounds to me that someone was able to convince corporate to give them some time to “bring X into compliance”, and never did.
And clearly, SOMEONE had overridden the duplicate credit card check on the corporate end.
Something stinks up top.
BTW Lund did not request 1 CC and 1 shipping address… this was all initiated by Jay Bennet because he believed we could do more volume easier and quicker.
He did get it done..!! How.?? that is the question I need answered the most.
Regarding Jay Bennett, it’s Interesting to note that at the Isagenix Events USA website, it says: “With 33 years in the industry, Jay has been a part of several network marketing companies who lacked integrity.” It then goes on to state what attracted Jay to Isagenix.
This situation is going to cause Isagenix to take a huge hit. As Kasey Chang wrote in a previous comment, “Something stinks up top.”
One has to wonder if top earner Jimmy “The Butcher” Smith knew anything about this? Isn’t he Jay’s upline?
Cannonball, Jay B is Jimmy Smith’s upline. I doubt Jimmy knows anything.
no wonder they got close to a billion in sales with games like this what a joke .. No wonder tehri sales are down 25 % and had to lay off over 70 people from corp in 2019.
Games will always cath up with you its same just another reason mlm gets a bad rap.
@Bryan
Ah, I lumped that in with the shipping address problem. Fixed, thanks.
Yep, something stinks. Sounds like an inside job at corp.
Possibly someone(s) acting on behalf of Isagenix & Jim Coover without his knowledge?
Or someone goofed after the fact and attempted some damage control.
We need Detective Columbo to crack this case wide open.
The Coovers apparently met Lund and discussed the racket. I haven’t seen those receipts but.
@oz I went to dinner with Jim and Kathy… with many other people I sat to the right of Jim and Kathy was to the left of Jim… she was drunk 1 glad of wine into dinner…
The person that made this introduction was Rich Ferguson and I did not pay for dinner… haha.
I have a good photo just before dinner but no Jim and Kathy.
Any idea on where this lawsuit currently stands?
State lawsuit so I can’t track it. Lund is commenting here though so perhaps he’ll keep us updated.
they just barely responded… they have been playing games since November??
But with everything getting out I think things a changing rapidly… So thanks to all of you..!!!
@bryanlund…the Coovers knew you were selling on amazon and were ok with that? Was the plan from JB to break even on the sales from Amazon and just make money on the commission from Isagenix?
I think we’ve all heard rumors that most MLM companies are doing secret Amazon sales. It’s highly unlikely that those sellers on Amazon are paying retail prices from a distributor and selling to make just a few pennies.
The margins aren’t there. Unless, the product is being sold at major discount by corporate and profits split with the Amazon seller.
Apparently, there’s a market for mlm’ers who want to sell off their overstock (comp plan qualified) products at a deep discount.
That much I know, and in a free country they should be able to sell the product second hand.
So long as the item description is accurate, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Love this. The smarmiest of the smarmy…… Jay Bennett.
The few at the top will do anything to make a buck as they know the towering pyramid beneath them can collapse at any time as 98% or more are losing their a$$.
Isagenix is fabulous if one is planning on living the pauper lifestyle. Tim Darnell (Advantage Conferences fame plus many more scams) is one of 308 Isagenix millionaires.
Jay Bennett brought this MLM goon in under him. Darnell has had numerous failed schemes, business bankruptcies, Federal Tax Liens (1 is $97,000.00) and the Dallas BBB and I both kicked his A$$ in court.
In the early 2000’s he was 200 grand in credit card debt and borrowing toilet paper from the neighbors. In 2012 he was $350,000.00 in debt.
Once again this millionaire mentor is going down the commode and can’t even pay the property taxes on his cheap tract house in Texas. J
ay Bennett’s MLM genius at the top of a leg that can’t pay 6 grand in taxes on a little house he lived in for almost 3 decades and had paid off. The lifestyle of the Pauper and Infamous!
And, yes there are reps selling off their mountains of garage stock purchased to get commissions. Desperation!