Because of the vast amount of information and contacts I had culled globally, I was able to obtain user names and passwords to Bill Britt’s, Dexter Yager’s and Zack’s web sites. From one site, I was able to garner access to a schedule of Amway meetings in Bill Britt’s massive organization. Steve and I went to the Holiday Inn in Dedham, Massachusetts to crash a recruitment meeting. I arrived early to scope out their protocol for entering the meeting, which was to be held in the Midland room. They had a sign-in book at the door, where the distributor paid his fee and signed in his or her guest.

I rendezvoused with Steve in the parking lot and gave him the details. He met me in the foyer area, trying to look like a prospect. For ethical reasons, he signed in using his real name. We walked into the lobby, and I registered him as my guest, and then we proceeded to the meeting area. Everyone was wearing business suits or dresses—the usual Amway required attire. The distributors walked around chatting excitedly; their gleaming 1,000-tape smiles pasted on their faces. The meeting was not billed as an Amway meeting but as an e-commerce pre-launch for Quixtar.

The host went to the microphone and brought the room to order. As was the custom, he gave the speaker a glowing introduction, and on cue, the distributors stood up and cheered wildly. I had become accustomed to speaking at those meetings and felt awkward just sitting in the audience. Like clockwork, the host rattled off a few ‘good ole boy’ jokes and set the audience at ease. He then ran through the same song and dance. I recognized certain cult techniques, and his talk was loaded with phobia-building statements that caused the audience to feel uneasy about the certainty of their financial future. He talked for over an hour and mentioned Amway in passing at the very end. As scripted, the host took the microphone and reminded everyone of just how fortunate we were to have someone who was successful come and teach us how to win in life. The whole thing now gave me a new definition for the word pathetic.

The host then brought up the Direct distributor couples and had them say a few well-rehearsed words. The men were essentially the same, and the women, like good Ambots, all but one proudly announced that they were full-time mothers. One poor woman talked almost ashamedly of her career but let the audience know that it was a short-term challenge.

The one thing that always seemed to amaze me as I did my research was how the group ideology and deceptive practices were perfectly duplicated among different groups in many countries. The three major groups I identified were Yager, Britt and a group called World Wide Dreambuilders, Inc. that was based in Spokane, Washington. I obtained a seven page Diamond contract that the World Wide group actually utilized to specify speaking fee and tape royalty details. Each of these groups utilized Profiles of Success books to show the lavish lifestyles of the "successful" Amway Diamonds. I was able to procure examples of each from across the nation. The scripts, positive professions, beliefs, and false representations were nearly identical in America, Europe, South America, and Australia.

Steve and I left and compared notes. He loaned me the manuscript of his book, Releasing The Bonds, Empowering People to Think for Themselves. In it, I read about the strategic interaction approach, which he used to help me break down my own false set of beliefs. (This book is a must-read for anyone who would like to help someone who is in a cult or trying to come out of a cult.) If you simply challenge people in a cult, they have been well conditioned to block out the negative. The book offers a subtle approach that slowly allows people to begin to think for themselves. The techniques taught in his book literally helped save my life. The information contained in this book is ground breaking, and he has created, perhaps, the greatest resource of its kind to assist loved ones in reaching a family member who is lost in a cult. I receive no commission from the sale of this book nor will I ever accept one. I promote this sound and helpful work, because the strategies outlined could save someone else’s life. You can read more about it and information about cultism in the Amway distributor force at www.freedomofmind.com.

I left Steve and began my journey home with a sense of elation. At home, I gathered the family around and told Josh, Ashley, and McKenzie that the new ‘happy dad’ was home and that we would now have a great life together. All seemed well. Kathy remained cautiously optimistic.

I did very well for two or three days, and then the bottom dropped out with no warning. I was flung into a deep, dark void of depression, nightmares, and renewed paranoia. How could this happen? I had been getting better. This was not fair. I had told my family that everything was all right, and now I was falling apart again. I continued my research, as I was unable to stop. There were too many people being harmed. I made contact with the following former distributor who agreed to tell her story if she could remain anonymous. This is her Amway experience exactly as I received it,

Dear Friend,

My heart grieves for her and the daily Amway terror she lives in. My faith in God has been restored miraculously in this process. I am glad, as this woman’s plight drove me to my knees in tears. After I read it at 3:00 a.m., I was on the floor of my office crying and praying for someone that I do not know. I also prayed for forgiveness, since I was also used to seduce people in the motivational cult that could lead others to this level of destruction.

It would not be very long until a good friend named Jim dropped out of the group and made contact with me. Jim was a Philadelphia police officer when he was recruited to become an Amway distributor in our organization. He had lost his home while proudly staying on tape-of-the-week and paying for all the seminars. He had almost assaulted his elderly father in front of his children on Easter while defending the Amway business and its virtuous leaders. He wanted me to explain to him how this happened, and I began to explain what I knew to be true. Reconnecting with friends like this gave me some strength. Jim was not alone, by any means, in suffering large financial losses.

Many, many business savvy individuals have lost out to Amway or its related motivational organizations. The MLMsurvivor.com web site, run by author Ruth Carter, made this comment regarding two CPA’s public:

Amway and its motivational groups would like you to believe that these are isolated incidents. The sad truth is quite the opposite. Most everyone in our organization lost money. The only question is how much. Paradoxically, some of the distributors who lost the very most were the ones who were the most loyal to the system of ‘success.’ Some of our Direct distributors are tens of thousands of dollars in debt after getting in Amway, buying its often expensive products, and committing completely to a system that claims to have a "100%" success rate. We had been sold the belief set that only broke people would keep shopping at Walmart, helping Sam Walton get wealthier.

We could win and win big for our families by shopping from our own business and getting paid for it. Distributors were often asked rhetorical questions like, "How long would you have to shop a Walmart to save enough to send your kids to college? You’re just taking care of Sam Walton’s kids. Shop from yourself and take care of your kids’ futures."

After our exodus from Amway, Kathy and I were shocked when we started shopping at Walmart. We found a large savings overall, but in many cases, we could purchase similar products there for one-half to one-third of the price we were paying through ‘our’ Amway business for the same type of consumer goods.

One of our former Silver Direct distributors dropped out. He was immediately shut off socially by his upline and treated as a non-person. He didn’t do what I had done; he just decided he needed more time with his family and left quietly. His upline Emerald actually told him, in what he described as a shrieking phone call, that she thought he was being very selfish putting his family above the group. He later shared that he felt paranoid and would check and re-check to make certain all the doors and windows of his home were locked at night. Eventually, he checked himself into the emergency room with what he thought was a heart attack. It was only a panic attack, which is a common symptom of cult withdrawal. We had many of the same cult exit symptoms. He advised us that after our exodus, he had been told that I was a cocaine user, had a gun and was planning to come to a seminar and kill people backstage. Some of my closest friends were there with loaded guns, prepared to kill me if necessary. Another distributor that dropped out and called and advised that I was referred to as "Judas" at a large public seminar in my hometown. Hearing this was like a terrible movie that we could not fast-forward or eject.

The more I researched, the more obvious it became that Amway was anything but the best business opportunity in the world. It may very well be the worst. In my experience, over 99% lost money. Many lost tens of thousands of dollars. Amway needed a way to satisfactorily conceal this, yet still satisfy the Federal Trade Commission. The SA-4400 is a document that was supposed to be shown to all prospects before they could become Amway distributors. Distributors had been told that this was a Federal Trade Commission Document. It is actually a document that is produced by Amway to show potential earnings to prospects. It shows a graphical depiction of how a new recruit sponsors six distributors, each of whom sponsor four distributors, each of whom then sponsor two more. For example, Amway depicts each distributor as doing 100 PV (Point Value), which is a little over $200 in merchandise.

The 1997 Amway Business Review depicts a distributor at this point making a gross income of $25,656¹ and Amway Sales at a whopping $6.8² billion dollars at estimated retail. The document also shows the average monthly gross income for "active" distributors to be $88.³ Now let’s look at these numbers from the perspective of reality. First, we found that this configuration of 6-4-2 is nearly impossible to achieve, let alone maintain. Most of our distributors were only able to personally sponsor three or four others before they became disillusioned at the pricing of the products or the difficulty in sponsoring. Amway openly admits, "only 41% of all distributors of record were found to be active."⁴ The turnover or dropout rate is incredible. In a single month, we never had anyone maintain a 6-4-2 structured business—this in almost a decade in The Business. With the dropout rate alarmingly high and about half of the new recruits quitting, we needed to sponsor twice as many new people into The Business. Additionally, our experience showed that the 100 PV per distributor was greatly inflated in relation to what kind of volume distributors actually did. As Directs and Emeralds, we received monthly printouts, which showed an average PV per distributor of fewer than 40.

Given these facts, we needed to sponsor even more people to get the volume near the projected goals. Many people were lured into The Business for the $25,656 income. "If you just shop from yourself and teach others to do the same, you can make a residual monthly income of over $2,138," was the ‘pitch’ we received at open meetings and the same one that we gave to thousands of other people.

Amway left out some very important information here. Gross income is your income before expenses. Amway has been well aware of the high pressure, mandatory purchases of books, tapes, seminar tickets, and other peripherals. These averaged well over $200 a month for distributors on the system in our organization. Then there was the cost of voice mail, extra gas mileage, dress clothes, accounting, long distance, and flights, as well as gifts and meals for your upline. Many distributors were induced to "invest" over ten thousand dollars a year in expenses involved in building "their own" Amway business. Wait, if the average gross income is $88 a month before expenses, then you would be losing a lot of money right from the start, right? No, you just don’t understand yet…it’s ‘your’ business, so you need to invest in yourself. Now you also need to buy all your own products from your business. So what if you and your wife used to spend twenty dollars a month on vitamins. You may spend $60 or more each month on Amway’s brand of vitamins—but they are really good… get the picture?

Also, the figure of $6.8 billion in sales is very misleading, if not deceptive for two reasons. First, it is a super-inflated number, because it is "estimated retail." Our experience in the North American market was that almost all the goods and services moved were purchased and self-consumed by distributors at their ‘wholesale’ price of often 30% less than the published "retail" price. Given that, we now know that this $6.8 billion may be off by over a billion dollars! Who does their books? Here’s where Amway may have crossed the line into material misrepresentation. The SA-4400 is a document used in recruitment in North America. The super inflated sales number of $6.8 billion is a representation of Amway’s global sales. In the mid 1990’s, it seemed as if the North American market stopped growing or died all together. However, these inflated, global sales figures were used to induce participation in a market (North America) that appears to have been going into a steep nosedive. The numbers were a tightly held secret, because Amway is a privately held company in the US.

Let’s get this all straight now…Almost all distributors in the US will find it is nearly impossible to build and maintain a business like the model that was shown and used to recruit distributors. Amway had to have the internal statistics and be well aware of this. They have always had the ability to track everything and do it well. Even if you, miraculously, did sponsor six who sponsored four who sponsored two, half would outright quit or go inactive. Of those left, only a small handful may do 100 PV. The huge (artificially inflated) billion dollar sales machine, you are a part of, may do the majority of its volume in foreign markets, while the market you live in may be crashing. However, you will not be made aware of that fact.

You will also not be adequately warned of the massive system expenses and destructive tactics of these cultish motivational organizations that have existed with Amway’s knowledge for two decades. You will not be told of the divorces, bankruptcies, and foreclosures that former distributors claim as a result of their involvement with either Amway, one of its motivational organizations, or both. You will not be told that some distributors will have to seek cult exit counseling upon leaving the organization. You will also not be told of the distributors who are having past year’s deductions wiped out and face a large tax bill after an IRS audit. The theft by deception has been in place for many years. Have you heard enough yet? Amway presents information in the SA-4400 that may be factually correct but is morally inaccurate. To use this document to induce participation in Amway is the moral equivalent of selling a home to a young couple but omitting to advise them that it is fully engulfed in flames.

Amway seems to be in a downward spiral now, as it prepares to lay off 2,000 employees. I think this may be attributed to the Internet and the now free exchange of information available on it. It was easier to keep problems isolated prior to the World Wide Web. With the Internet, I was able to gather information from distributors across the US and Canada as well as the rest of the world. It also allowed me the luxury of going back in time to document what had been taking place in the Amway business for decades.

I learned of a man named Bruce Craig. He served as the Assistant Attorney General of the state of Wisconsin for 30 years until his retirement in 1997, at which point he went into private practice. While acting as the Assistant Attorney General, he prosecuted pyramid cases, including what he describes as "extensive litigation" against Amway in the early 1980’s for income misrepresentations. In the discovery process of this litigation, distributors tax returns revealed that the top 1% of Amway distributors in his state (Direct distributors) had net annual incomes of "minus $900."^* The system and its related costs have grown dramatically since then. The income figures could actually be worse now.

Why is Bruce Craig a relevant player in this drama? He has submitted a letter to Robert Pitofsky, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, requesting that the commission revisit its 1979 decision, declaring that Amway was not an illegal pyramid. This decision was based at least in part on the appearance of there were certain safety rules in place to protect distributors. These rules, specifically the retail sales rule, seem to have been all but completely ignored by Amway. In light of this, Mr. Craig made this remark in his petition to the FTC,

Billions of dollars is a significant sum. I had believed that Amway has been used as a front company for the motivational organizations to siphon off well over a billion dollars from its’ loyal distributor force. This seems to confirm that estimation. Through a secretive Internet contact, the message is delivered that I am willing to provide insider information, documentation and testimony to the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Craig calls my home a few days later, and I tell him what I have in terms of documentation. I send off a large federal Express box to Chairman Pitofsky, full of documentation and a letter expressing my willingness to testify, despite an active death threat. I receive confirmation from Fed-Ex that it is delivered but never hear from Mr. Pitofsky or his staff. It’s getting harder to tell who the good guys are.

Senator Rick Santorum came in for us and spoke to a group of thousands of Amway distributors in the Hershey Arena just prior to his election. He won the election by only a few percentage points, and we all felt, at the time, that perhaps the Amway vote swung the election for our state. He seems like a good, honorable man. Kathy and I had spoken with him and his wife back stage, and we had our pictures taken together at a photo opportunity. I sent his office an 8 X 10 picture of Kathy and I with him and his wife and informed him that, unknowingly, his credibility may have been used to bolster a scheme that has drained millions of dollars from his constituents. I provided very detailed documentation that is nearly identical to what I sent to the Federal Trade Commission. With the picture of him, his wife and Kathy and I, I am certain to get a response, right? Like Mr. Pitofsky of the FTC, neither he nor his staff even acknowledged getting the Fed-Ex box full of documentation.

I would later make a discovery that would shock me regarding campaign contributions to Rick Santorum. In 1994, Dexter, Birdie and Doyle Yager, who were all North Carolina Residents, each gave $1,000^* to Rick Santorum’s campaign. Why would people from North Carolina donate to a Pa politician? Elizabeth DeVos made a 10/24/00 donation of $1,000 in the name of The Windquest Group^*. Why would a Michigan resident do this? Here’s the most shocking to me. Zack, his brothers, family members involved in Amway and his daughter in college made a combined total of 18^* donations to Santorum from 1994 to 1999. Additionally, another one of Zack’s Diamonds made multiple contributions to Santorum.

Is there anyone left in American politics, regulation or law enforcement that has more character than Amway has money or influence? Is Rick Santorum or his staff corrupt? I do not think so but have no way of knowing. But for him or his staff to not even acknowledge receiving information, regarding the financial rape of his constituents is unconscionable. The fact that the people who seem to be perpetrating this fraud are contributors does not look good. The FBI has not yet come back for any of the extensive documentation I have nor will they tell me if they are even investigating the case. I contact David Sumner, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, Department of Consumer Affairs. I explain the situation, but as soon as I mention the FBI, he backs off. If they are doing anything his office cannot touch it. The Attorney General’s office will not touch it, because the FBI is involved. I don’t think they are doing anything. I feel like a man without a country.

Who will take care of this before I am killed or my evidence is stolen and destroyed? I make multiple copies and get the originals of everything off site and out of state, after being advised by an attorney that I "could have a house fire" very easily. The pressure is mounting, as everyone that knows us wants me to just walk away. My bank is calling about my late mortgage payments. This is too evil to let go on. I wish I could walk away at times. I was told a distributor had committed suicide but was unable to discover whether this was actually true. I felt certain there had been far more than one suicide from what I had learned. Our finances continued to erode as Amway and our upline seemed to collaboratively starve us out. We were near the breaking point. I was unable to walk away from the evil that was destroying me. I wanted to walk away desperately but could not. By far, the greatest personal damage I struggled with daily was the financial ruin that my family lived in. This created more stress than any other situations.

I was a tired, nearly broken man. I could not stop but do not know how I could go on. Once again, I felt like I was falling apart psychologically. The nightmares were becoming more vivid. I felt as if I could not go to sleep one more time to die a hideous death in the contorted realm of my dreams. I could not bear to see Kathy or the kids hurt, maimed, or killed in yet another nocturnal no-way-out scenario. Last night, I dreamed we were living in hiding like Anne Frank. A group of soldiers discovered us and dragged Kathy and my beautiful daughters from me and into a home for their own pleasure. I exploded into consciousness heart pounding, sweating and panting to the sounds of their screams for help. I was again powerless to help them. I lived in a state of agonizing daily powerlessness. Days were hell. Nights were hell. It was all getting worse and I was falling apart one day at a time. I could not get a professional job, and so I took work that paid near the minimum wage. I shoveled tons of corn inside huge drying bins. I was willing to do almost anything at that point. It was hard to imagine that I had once had a career in the corporate world, a retirement account, rental properties, peace of mind and time with my family. All that had changed for me.

The job shoveling corn in drying bins was strenuous and caused physical discomfort, as I breathed large amounts of dust. I would cough up black chunks of this dust at the supper table. I came home filthy and always looked forward to a cool shower. At night, my eyes fused shut from the large amount of dust that had collected in them during the day. On the other hand, it was healthy, as I was learning that there is no shame in a J-O-B, no matter what you do to provide for your family. The job involved a good deal of solitary time and allowed me to begin to deprogram a little.

Amway continued what appears to be a campaign to financially destroy anyone who dares speak against them. Their external "legal team" begin to seek depositions and other information from web site owners Sidney Schwartz, John Hoagland, Dave Midgett and Ruth Carter. In some cases, they attempt to obtain access to the entire contents of these people’s hard drives. In some instances, they are actually granted access to this, and mirror image copies are made for Amway’s legal team to review. This is terrifying to all of us who are now exposed to even greater risk by having Amway know our names and contacts. On these hard drives are e-mails from many who have been harmed by their participation in Amway, who are seeking help. Sidney had deleted many of these, but unknown to him, they are still stored in unused memory on his hard drive, and Amway gets them. I begin to use a program that does a high level, government encryption wipe of the free space on my hard drive to assure that the information and communications that I delete are destroyed. This is like a George Orwell story that we are all trapped in.

Big brother is powerful, alive and well. One soldier after another falls from the financial pressure of mounting legal bills. Sidney Schwartz and Ashley Wilkes are forced for financial reasons to remove their web sites from public view. The MLMsurvivor.com web site run by Ruth Carter is pummeled but still up. Ruth is subpoenaed, along with the contents of her hard drive, by Amway four separate times for lawsuits that she is a non-party to. She too had this done by Amway’s attorney Norbert Kugele. He too is very good at what he does. In every case, Norbert or Amway dropped the request at the last moment and never even gets a deposition for her. To fight these legal actions, she and her husband run up nearly $15,000 in legal fees. Freedom of speech is any but free. I do not understand how they can keep going but admire her courage and commitment to the victims of Amway and its motivational organizations. More and more sites are shut down. You have the right to free speech in America, but God help you if you use that right to speak against Amway. Now, people searching for any information about Amway are bombarded with an enormous number of pro-Amway pages put on the web in an apparent effort to combat the publication of this "negative information." My number is coming up, as I have been in close contact with some of these people. My name and e-mails are on their computers. The pressure is immense.

I began to drink again at night, on occasion, to drown out the hell of my life and the shame I felt for my family’s living conditions. I am haunted by the lives of those I recruited who are still in the cult. It seemed as if there was no end. Just when it appeared we would hit rock bottom, we would fall deeper. Our upline continued to make outrageous demands for me to sign the servicing agreement. They knew we had lost our medical insurance and were in the process of losing our home. We are fearful that one of our children could become very ill or injured and have no coverage. Our torment must have brought Amway and our Upline delight, because they would not let up and continued to apply more pressure.

Kathy and I both landed professional jobs at nearly the same time. She worked in the front office for a local pediatrician, and I got a job in the marketing department of a large, family-owned business. It was agonizing to try and find our place in this now foreign world. We did not know how to make basic conversations with people outside of the group. Fear gripped us both, like children on the opening day of first grade. Financially, it was too little too late to save our home on our incomes. Fighting this depression and cult withdrawal was an all-consuming, enormous, daily struggle for me. I never knew what my emotions would be from day to day. I would be healthy for three or four days straight, and my spirits would be lifted, and then I would crash again.

I had been the social leader, and Kathy had been a little shy and slower to meet people, but now the tables were turned. She had counted on me to handle social situations in the past, and now I followed her like a new puppy. I rarely spoke in social settings. We would run into people we knew, and I would stand by her side or behind her and not say a word. We had new neighbors move in, and I just sat inside and watched them for months. The thought of any prolonged conversation or social interaction terrified me.

The pressure was really on, as we got closer to losing the house. We were amazed that they were going to push it this far. Didn’t they have any sense of damage control? It looked as if they were going to randomly enforce a rule as punishment but not apply the same rule to Dexter, Zack, and all their other leaders that had not spoken out against fraud and deception in the distributor ranks. As the pressure intensified, I relented and agreed to Amway’s informal conciliation process but made it clear that it was not a request for, nor did I have any interest in, binding arbitration. We needed to get our bonus money out of escrow fast if we were to save our home. We were also very much afraid one of the children could get hurt, and we did not have any medical insurance.

The first meeting was scheduled by Dan Bailey of Amway Rules and Conduct, and I was later informed that neither Zack nor Kerry could attend. That seemed odd, as I had listened to them both talk about having no schedule and "six Saturdays and a Sunday" for the last 9 years. The meeting was rescheduled at a later date, and I became increasingly more anxious.

I was told that one person would mediate the conciliation, and he would essentially pass judgment on my situation. If I didn’t like the results, then I could go into arbitration…. I don’t think so. I learned that Crown Direct Jody Victor was to act as Judge and Jury. This was incredible. He and Zack had been friends for close to two decades. Not only that, they had been paying each other large speaking fees to speak to one another’s group. Jody would come in to speak for us, and about six months later, a tape of the speech was sold as a tape-of-the-week to all the distributors.

I exposed massive fraud and deception in the tool business from which Zack and Jody apparently derived nearly all their Amway related income. They were long-term acquaintances, if not good friends, who benefited financially from each other and common deceptive business practices. Now Jody was going to sit down and impartially mediate a dispute between us? To call this a pathetic farce gives it far more credibility than it merited. This was beginning to smell more and more rotten as it aged. It seems clear that Amway was rotten to the very core.

If I hadn’t already felt like vomiting, I would have laughed when I later learned that Zack served on the legal and ethics committee of the IBOA International (Independent Business Owners Association - formerly the Amway Distributors Association (ADA) board). It got better… Jody Victor was the Chairman of the Committee.⁵ What a twisted, contorted perversion of everything on earth that was promoted as good and honorable. I cancelled the meeting for reasons that are quite evident.

My job was progressing well, and I led a sales team that was going to Billy Graham’s Amsterdam 2000 conference for 10,000 third world Evangelists. Just prior to the trip, one of my key players left the company, and I took his place for the trip. This was the beginning of another strange odyssey. As an Emerald, my name and address had been placed upon several mailing lists. One of those lists belonged to Gospel Films. The President of Gospel Films is a man named Billy Zeoli. We had heard him speak several times. Dexter often brought him to our Emerald clubs. We had been to one such meeting where Dexter insisted upon giving Billy a new Cadillac of his choosing. Mr. Zeoli was an engaging speaker and normally spoke on topics that related to faith. He did a rousing talk at one meeting about what God could do in our lives if we would just be available. His message was powerful, and it impacted my life. I trusted him. He almost invariably praised both Dexter and Rich DeVos with the highest accolades. Just prior to my trip to Amsterdam, I received a mailing from Billy that was very odd. It was sent on Gospel Communications International, Inc. stationery and advised that we had an incredible opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ worldwide. It also said that, "We need your gift, as this great opportunity is upon us now. Please respond by sending a check today."⁶

This actually was only a short cover letter for another letter, addressed to Kathy and me, from Dexter Yager. Dexter’s letter stated that Gospel Communications "has been asked to take a major role in Amsterdam 2000. Their responsibility at this conference will be to serve, encourage, and empower the Nationals from hundreds of different tribes, nations and people groups and to train and supply them with the evangelistic media tools they so desperately need."⁷

I did some checking with my contacts at the Graham organization and found that Gospel Communications was going simply as a vendor in the exhibitor hall, just the same as my company. I looked at our conference map and saw that our booths actually shared a common wall. I was sending our team to Amsterdam for a little over $9,000. This included all flights, hotels, meals, telephone, booth charges, and a large amount of resource materials that my company made to give away free to encourage these evangelists.

Dexter’s letter went on to say,

I was sickened by their deception. How could they do this to honest, well-meaning people? $185,000? The trip to Amsterdam was uneventful, and I was anxious to see what Gospel communications was displaying at this event. They had a much larger booth, but after talking to Billy Zeoli’s son, Zack, and some of his managers, it seemed clear that they were there for one reason…to sell videotapes. Their staff advised me that they were not giving out any media resources but had discounted the prices of Christian Videos to near $10.00.

I work for a small, for-profit company that is giving away resources, and Gospel Communications is attempting to raise somewhere near $100,000 more than it may need to sell videos at a large profit to third world evangelists. God bless America!

I began to honestly wonder if everyone connected to Amway becomes corrupt. I had a friend snap several photos of me with Billy for documentation. As soon as I told him that I knew Dexter, he put his arm around me, thanked me for all "our people have done" and walked me right out of the booth. It was very strange.

While at the booth, I picked up several copies of their literature. Gospel Communications and its web site www.Gospelcom.net look like a branch office of Amway. Rich DeVos is Chairman of the Board. Doug DeVos, his son, is Vice Chairman. The rest of the Board includes Dexter and is made up almost exclusively of Amway Diamonds. These guys seem to have their hands in many religious and political activities. It certainly sheds more light on Amway, its owners, and Diamond leadership.

I was beginning to feel a little better when the events of the past year finally got to Kathy. She had carried the kids, herself, and me through everything. I had been so completely absorbed in just surviving each day that I had no comprehension of the hell she had lived through. She had watched me time and time again go to the swimming hole with a cigar, a beer, and my loaded gun, never knowing if I would return. The toll on her had been enormous.

She succumbed to the darkest depression I had ever seen. It only took about three days to totally consume her. Her once radiant eyes were sunken and lifeless. She was exhausted constantly. We both had cried so much that we no longer had tears. We were totally spent. There was nothing left inside either of us. At times, she climbed into bed at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon and slept the rest of the day and all night. My dear, sweet Kathy was dying from the inside out, and there was nothing that I could do. Our upline was robbing her of her will to live. She withdrew not only from me, but also from the children she loved more than life itself.

Kathy retreated into a quiet world of darkness, and I was powerless to comfort her. There was a point where I was supposed to get tough and pull myself together to be the solid rock that she needed. I tried with all my might, but I, too, was falling apart at the seams. Kathy was unable to take care of the children when she got home from work and needed help. The family-owned company I worked for had nearly a hundred employees to worry about, but I met with Robert and Evelyn (the owners), broke down, and told him that I was losing my family. I worked for their nephew Thomas. They prayed with me, for my family and for Kathy’s healing. Not only that, the three of them got together and changed all my responsibilities and my work schedule, allowing me to come in and leave an hour and a half early, in order to spend time with the kids and to help Kathy. They also provided me with books to help attempt to piece our relationship together. I had seen the very worst in human nature but from them I saw the best. I was surrounded by new friends, who encouraged and uplifted me daily. It helped me greatly, but it did not help Kathy. She was alone and falling deeper into the abyss.

This beast of the darkness had her in its teeth. She was going from bad to worse. Watching her further succumb was hell. It was like watching her burn to death and being unable to put out the fire. I had always been able to protect her. I felt useless and could do nothing, as the cancer of depression ate at her soul. I could put on the game face at work and function effectively but fell apart in my car on the way home. I lay awake next to Kathy night after night, and there were no words that brought her comfort. I put my hand on her back and prayed for her healing night after night, but it did not come.

I realized that I had brought all of this upon her. I think that if I could go back in time to the day we met, I might have avoided Kathy to spare her the living hell that had become her life. Being with me was like having hot coals heaped upon her day after day. I believed that I was no longer capable of even the most mundane acts as a father or husband.

I began thinking thoughts like, "They will all be better off without me." I could not bring any more pain or disappointment into their lives. I prayed for death and that did not come. I was the target that needed to be silenced by the powers of Amway. I could no longer place my family in the line of fire. Suicide was not an option, so I decided that I would have to leave them for their own good and their safety. This was the same terrible decision my own father had to make many years ago. Kathy is my soul mate and the woman of my dreams. I have never met another person as good or as kind as she is. It tore my heart out, as I realized I needed to leave her and the children I love more than life itself, for their own good. Now I understood what my father had had to do.

I left Kathy a letter telling her of my decision and enclosed my wedding band in it. My heart was broken as I drove to work. Amway and its related cult had won. They had taken or destroyed all that I valued in this life. I was completely destroyed spiritually, emotionally and financially. Kathy called me at work and asked me if I really wanted to end our relationship. We were both completely numb and emotionless. Of course, I didn’t want to do that, but I couldn’t stop the insanity in our lives any other way. We spoke like robots. We were completely drained and could cry no more. There was not much left within either of us, but we did agree to talk after work.

Thank God, somehow we decided that we could pull through this—together. We had no idea how we were going to do that. I wrote Dick DeVos another letter and begged him to release our funds to save our home. He did not respond. Our bank told us that they had stalled the foreclosure process four months past when they should have taken action, because they knew the situation. They felt bad, because we were long-time customers and had perfect credit ratings before Amway. The account had to be turned over to their attorneys for processing. I understood that they had to take that action. The pressure was mounting. I did not know how we were going to tell the kids that we were losing the home. They had grown up in that house. They had played with their dog in this yard. I could not bear the thought of telling them.

On the way home from work one day, I began to experience pressure on the left side of my chest. I ignored it at first, because it seemed minor. We were sitting down for dinner when the pains became sharp and frequent. I knew what was happening to me. There was a very real pain coursing through my chest. I was sure I must have been having a heart attack. I pulled Kathy out of the kitchen and told her not to worry, but that I was going to the hospital to have it checked out. When I arrived at the hospital emergency room, I was soon strapped to all kinds of machines and monitors. I did not want to die now. I wanted to live. Kathy soon arrived and waited by my bedside. She had always been by my side. I loved her so much. She did not deserve this. The pastor (the one that I almost attacked) came to be with us, and I felt overwhelmed by the mess our lives had become. He was a good man and a true friend.

After many tests, it turned out that I had pleurisy, which was described to me as an infection or irritation of the sac that surrounds the lungs. What a relief, but I knew I had to end the stress, before the stress literally killed one or both of us.

I sent a fax to both Amway and my sponsor, Kerry. I told them that I had digital copies made of photographs of myself with Rich DeVos, Dexter Yager, Zack and Molly, Oliver North, Robert Schuller, Dave Thomas and others. I told them that if I did not have the funds released and in my account by Friday at 4:30 p.m., I would release the photographs to the global media with my story. Incredibly, after nearly a year, they decided to release the almost $20,000 of ours that had been held hostage. They actually wanted to know if they should overnight the check or do a wire transfer.

We were able to pay the back interest on our mortgages and stop the foreclosure. Not all that long ago, we had been out of debt completely, with the exception of a first mortgage on our home. We had then gone bankrupt, lost our retirement account, sold our investment properties, destroyed our once-perfect credit and had three mortgages, and the IRS had a lien on our home. All of this was a result of our Amway experience.

We had junk cars with high mileage on them. Despite this, we were beginning to feel more freedom than we ever had in the group as Emeralds. We went to the movies and did activities as a family. This felt rather awkward at first, but it was good to be together—even though there was a deep chasm between Kathy and I. She had been ‘harmed’ into silence. I tried to keep things at a fairly superficial level, but I was not emotionally stable either. My innermost being wanted to fix everything. We were free but imprisoned at the same time. We do not know whom we were or what to do with our lives. We had spent nine years sharing false hope with others, and now we were unable to enjoy genuine hope in our own relationship.

Amway went on what seems to be a corporate mission, which seemed to focus on removing any hint of "Amway" from Amway or its distributors. The Amagram magazine was a monthly magazine distributors sent to distributors now called The Loop. Distributors are now called IBO’s (Independent Business Owners). What an incredible farce. I have, perhaps a more accurate acronym for IBO. It’s… I’m Bending Over. The Amway Distributor Association is now the IBOA International. The Amway Mutual fund is now the Activa Mutual Fund. Dexter’s bi-monthly magazine is no longer called Dreambuilders, but it is now called The Business Owner. Amway now seems to have, once again, morphed into a new parent company named Alticor. It appears that Amway has been broken down into smaller companies called Access Business Group and Pyxis Innovations. Amway, Quixtar, Access Business Group and Pyxis Innovations are now subsidiaries of Alticor. I believe that Amway ownership is expecting a huge class action suit or Federal interdiction against Amway and is skelatonizing its assets as an umbrella of protection. There has been a huge push for Quixtar and its new "IBO’s." The sad part of it is that many people, earnestly seeking opportunity, think they actually have all the rights of a business owner when they become Quixtar Independent Business Owners. They may want to check with the IRS and see what could happen to them in the event of an audit. They also should know that they could work for a decade or longer and have their income shut off by a company that was described to them as merely a supplier. Nothing much has changed. The Quixtar business is the bait by which the masses still are being lured into the exact same motivational organizations that seem to clearly be destructive cults.

To truly find what is at the heart of a business, one needs to be around its leaders. I am about to share some statements that have never before been made public. They are statements from a transcript of an Emerald meeting that Kathy and I attended. It was on a Tuesday night after a Marathon of non-stop meetings at a "Go Diamond" weekend. Nearly all of us attending this meeting were completely exhausted. The setting seemed surrealistic. Here we were after midnight in a room with Dexter. Heads bobbed and jerked occasionally, as people tried to stay awake. Some were actually drooling in their sleep, while others had already collapsed and slept with their heads on their note pads. Here are some quotes that may be of interest.