Oh jeez. Don't even get me started on MLMs! I can clearly see that those at the top of the pyramids do oh-so-well. But their downlines? Not so much. They're sold on the dream that network marketing is easy, fun, or .... ethical. It's usually not any of these things, and even more rarely is it all three at the same time.

No, girl I went to middle school with and haven't spoken to since then, I do not want to join your damn team or buy your (probably) second-rate products. I'll buy my vitamins, essential oils, shakes, and printed leggings at the store without your pushy sales tactics or transparent recruitment attempts, thank you very much. (But I'm probably not buying that stuff at any store, either.)

So as for these specific scams, unfortunately, yes, I have personally seen people affected by this, and more than I care to see. (Damn scammers!)

They usually fall into one of two buckets:

• People holding onto the dream that the shady offer they received is for real, and looking to us to confirm its validity. In a couple of cases, folks indicated they went so far as to send their personal identification documents to the fakers.
• People who recognized the scam for what it was, and were giving us a heads up just in case we weren''t already aware that there were scammers out there impersonating our company

If anyone who'd been offered a nonexistent position with our company has fallen for the scam all the way (checks cashed and all), we haven't heard from them. I imagine they're too busy trying to pick up the pieces of a very, very painful lesson to learn, and are possibly too embarrassed or overwhelmed to reach out to us.

This scam is ... prevalent. Unfortunately, there's not much to be done other than to report the issue to the email provider (so Google, etc) as well as the Crime Complaint Center (FBI) / Anti-Fraud Centre (Canada) / your local gov't agency that deals with this stuff.

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