Robert Fitzpatrick

  • pyramidschemealert.org/
  • Anti-MLM (Multi-Level Marketing)
  • Books
    • 2012 - Book - False Prophets, by Robert Fitzpatrick
    • 2020 - Book - Ponzinomics, by Robert Fitzpatrick
    • 2023 - Book - Direct Selling: A Nonfiction Fable, by Robert Fitzpatrick 
  • Year-? - Pyramid Politics: The FTC’s Long History of Protecting “Multi-Level Marketing”, by Robert L. FitzPatrick - 14p
  • 2013 0109 - CNBC - Multi-Level Marketing Critic: Beware 'Main Street Bubble', by Herb Greenberg - [link]
  • 2015 0924 - mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com - Robert FitzPatrick offers more 'MLM' evidence-based analysis. Mid-Year Data Reaffirms Saturation For Publicly-Traded 'MLM's, by Robert FitzPatrick - [link]
    • All recruits - numbering in the hundreds of thousands annually - are also primo candidates themselves to purchase Primerica's life insurance or IRA products, whether or not they ever get licensed. You can't sell what you yourself would not also buy, right?
    • In its SEC filings, Primerica documents exactly how many sales reps it enrolls each quarter, how many ultimately become newly licensed and the per capita sales of new life insurance policies by the entire licensed force. The correlates of Primerica's never-ending recruiting requirements are obvious in the data:
      • From 2008 through mid 2015, Primerica reported that it had recruited an astounding 1.6 million new people in North America to become licensed representatives,
      • At the end of that period, the company reported that just over 100,000 were actually licensed, and 18% of them had been signed up just in the last six months. So, each year, more than a third of the entire licensed sales force is brand new. In three years, the vast majority of the whole force has quit.
      • The average number of licensed sales reps for the first six months of 2015 is less than it was for the year of 2009. In other words, as many had quit as had been recruited, more than a million and a half.
      • During this first six months of 2015, recruiting increased 16% over that time period a year ago. This increased recruiting produced an 8% gain in licensed sales people from a year before. The 16% gain in recruiting, which produced the 8% increase in licensees, in turn, produced the 8% revenue increase.