Gator Dave Asks People To Compare GWT and the 8-Ball Boardgame, so I Did

And of course he insults me. Should I be flattered? Or disturbed? I guess its not unexpected that the self-proclaimed crusader against scams everywhere would turn on me - like he viciously attacks anyone who disagrees with him or calls out his inaccurate or deceitful comments in the message board world he inhabits.

So here's what he wrote:

As usual another anonymous gutless coward posting, copying and spreading obviously un-provable lies and gossip.And of course GWT is the classic "8-Ball Board Game" just compare their "board game" to TTI, BIM, WEW etc.Although, readers I do recommend you take the only relevant advice of this anonymous gutless coward, "geronimo" here, who steals the name of a brave warrior when he writes ......"To everyone else - be careful who you listen to......"So, who do you listen to folks??? The guy who gives you his name and contact details; documents you can verify on your own; the guy who won a Superior Court Judgment against a prestigious 24 lawyer law firm; predicted the collapse of of hundreds of banks and corporations, and predicted for years the dangers of Ponzi/pyramid schemes flooding the world and how, unchecked, they will destroy the world economy as they did the the Country of Albania in the late 1990's ...... or do you listen to some cowardly "church basement type" gossip hiding, like the "proclaimed Christian" KKK, in the shadows of anonymity. Now that, like the pyramid fraud of GWT should be a "no-brainer". And that's the truth! dave - CBNow

Once again, we do agree on a couple of things.

1. Be Careful Who You Listen to...
2. That people should make up their own minds (though I think they should do it based on facts)

Now I guess I won't address the fact that he is insulting Christians (though as a Christian I guess I should, but I'll let God be the judge), and somehow connecting me with the KKK? And calling me names, etc. And as for what or who is the no-brainer.... I'll have to let you be the judge.

As for my anonymity - I've already stated the relevant facts (that two different friends previously asked me to review BIM and GWT, which I did, and declined both, though GWT seemed the safer bet of the two), and now I'd prefer to stick to the facts of the matter, rather than slander and name-calling. I've decided NOT to keep responding to him on the FACTnet, mainly because they started charging for people to post on their message board (never heard of that as a viable internet business model before, but I wish them luck). I guess they already have one paying customer, since it seems Gator Dave is using his CBNow donation money to defend himself on message boards. I guess he has to keep his sole income stream going.
Since it seems that Gator Dave Thornton is still making his specific assertions without actually taking the time to understand the facts, let me do people the favour of giving you some additional information to review, so that you can make your own decision. Which might lead you to make a certain decision on Dave, or not. But that's up to you.

From the above, he makes an assertion about GWT, and asks us to test it:

GWT is the classic "8-Ball Board Game" just compare their "board game" to TTI, BIM, WEW

Ok, well I've never evaluated TTI or WEW, but I did evaluate GWT and BIM when different friends asked me to take a look, and as a result I did read about legitimate network marketing versus pyramid schemes, so I may as well compare GWT to the 8-Ball Board Game, as Dave asks. I thought I already outlined it pretty well in the previous post about different MLM models, but I guess not. Or someone refuses to review the facts. Either way, here goes:

The Board Game or 8-Ball Model
(Source: Wikipedia article on Pyramid Schemes, sub-heading 8-Ball Model)

Many pyramids are more sophisticated than the simple model. These recognize that
recruiting a large number of others into a scheme can be difficult so a
seemingly simpler model is used. In this model each person must recruit two
others, but the ease of achieving this is offset because the depth required to recoup any money also increases. The scheme requires a person to recruit two others, who must each recruit two others, who must each recruit two others.

The "8-ball" model contains a total of 15 members. Note that unlike in the picture, the triangular setup in the cue game of eight-ball corresponds to an arithmetic
rogression 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15. The pyramid scheme in the picture in contrast is a geometric progression 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 = 15.

Prior instances of this scam have been called the "Airplane Game" and the four tiers labelled as "captain", "co-pilot", "crew", and "passenger" to denote a person's level. Another instance was called the "Original Dinner Party" which labelled the tiers as "dessert", "main course", "side salad", and "appetizer". A person on the "dessert" course is the one at the top of the tree. Another variant "Treasure Traders" variously used gemology terms such as "polishers", "stone cutters", etc. or gems "rubies", "sapphires", "diamonds", etc. Such schemes may try to downplay their pyramid nature by referring to themselves as "gifting circles" with money being "gifted". Popular scams such as the "Women Empowering Women"[13] do exactly this. Joiners may even be told that "gifting" is a way to skirt around tax laws.
Whichever euphemism is used, there are 15 total people in four tiers (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) in the scheme - the person at the top of this tree is the "captain", the two below are "co-pilots", the four below are "crew" and the bottom eight joiners are the "passengers".
The eight passengers must each pay (or "gift") a sum (e.g. $1000) to join the scheme. This sum (e.g. $8000) goes to the captain who leaves, with everyone remaining moving up one tier. There are now two new captains so the group splits in two with each group requiring eight new passengers. A person who joins the scheme as a passenger will not see a return until they exit the scheme as a captain. This requires that 14 others have been persuaded to join underneath them.
Therefore, the bottom 3 tiers of the pyramid always lose their money when the scheme finally collapses.

Sorry for the length of the article, but there's some good stuff in there. Wikipedia does a good job of explaining it, and even mentions Treasure Traders and Women Empowering Women as previous examples, as does Dave.

The key points are:

1. You join a "board" - hence the name "boardgame"
2. You pay once, but could rejoin again if you want (and many encourage you to)
3. You only make money once, when you get to the top and your board completes & splits, when it fills in to the total of 15 people (1-2-4-8). In theory you could make a bigger board, but the classic ones do 15.
4. As a result, in order to make ANY money, you must recruit your people and hope the board eventually completes so you get any money back - otherwise you're just stuck with whatever you receive in your initial package (it better be worth what you paid for it, but its hard for that to be the case when they have to pay all these commissions out).

Clear so far? Now the other side...

Global Wealth Trade's Variable Compensation Plan

So lets compare that with Global Wealth Trade, as Dave asks us to do. When I was reviewing them before, I searched and found their Compensation Plan on their company website.

Note: from what I've seen, most of these 8-ball or boardgame schemes DO NOT post their compensation plan anywhere visible to the public. Makes it a little more difficult for the authorities to come after them, I'd imagine. Most legitimate network marketing companies DO post their full plan in plain sight, because they have nothing to hide. I looked into the details posted on their site to see if there was anything that seemed like the 8-Ball Model Dave claims is plain for all to see.

Here's what they say about what you get, and how you can make money with them:

Each package includes the business startup kit and product inventory (SAC). The starter kit is sold at cost and includes distributorship, annual fee, website and shopping cart, and business-in-a-bag. Product inventory can be used for personal purchase or buying items for resale.

Package levels:
GOLD ($697)
TITANIUM ($1,597)
PLATINUM ($3,597)

A person can also apply to join as a Retailer (Retail member). This does not include any product purchase ... (and) a retailer can earn retail profits and wholesale profits.

With GWT, a member can earn using any one, or all, five ways:

1. Retail profits
2. Wholesale profits
3. Team Commissions and Residual
4. Business Development Bonus
5. Incentives

So you can earn money in lots of different ways to recoup your initial investment, and to start turning a profit.

First off, by buying the products at wholesale, and selling them at the retail price online or offline, and making the difference. This is a completely viable normal business - and jewellery IS a high margin business. And some people would probably want to become a member just to get the members' prices, like at a Costco. Especially someone with a major jewellery purchase coming up like an engagement, anniversary, or someone who collects watches? Others could just buy and then sell at home parties, or directly to people they know, online, etc.

Or you can sell packages of products, which include their choice of products plus a business kit, website, business cards, etc, and earn a wholesale commission on the package. Every time you sell a package, and there's no additional requirements to receive it (such as getting to a top of a board, board splitting, etc) That sounds reasonable, and has nothing to do with a boardgame.

And if you opt to build a team after introducing your first two members, you can get paid a commission based on a percentage of the total product sales in the team in a given week - whether packages, one-off website sales, or monthly SAC account contributions.

While its true that this is a Binary system (link to the Wikipedia article) - as I discussed in the previous post - since you can only put two people on your first level below you, this has nothing to do with the 8-ball or Boardgame that Dave keeps asserting GWT is. Based on what, I'm really not sure. As you can see from their company diagram, you can get paid on these Team Commissions based on the total VOLUME - which has nothing to do with how many people sign up. There's no boards of 15 people. There's no boards splitting. No 1-2-4-8 hierarchy. In fact, you can get paid on the team commissions with as few as two sales - one Platinum Package on each side would make you a $600 commission (from the $6000 in sales volume, and every $3000 in sales paying $300). And you'd be making wholesale profits at the same time to increase your commission to $900 so far. And you'd still have $3000 to spend on your own products - for you, or to resell.

Its a binary plan - which is an accepted and legal network marketing structure.

And there's more ways to be compensated: if you help other people make these commissions, you can make a matching bonus.

And like many other sales jobs or businesses, you can qualify for trips or cars based on continued performance.


Conclusion

In summary, Global Wealth Trade is not even remotely like an 8-ball Boardgame model. So Dave is dead wrong here. Which is exactly why I've been saying that Gator Dave should be more careful about his targets if his true aim is to stop ILLEGAL pyramid schemes. But if his goal is as CDT claims - to extort money out of his targets by attacking them from the internet, then maybe again he should try picking someone who is illegal. But I guess he doesn't have any assets he'd be worried about in a defamation suit, which is probably why GWT and other companies don't sue him. Its just not worth the money.

Once again Dave, stick to what you know... or at least figure out what you don't know. Right now, the latter is more than clear to all of us.

But I'm sure instead you'll either change your line of attack (since you've been proven wrong here), call me names, or start randomly mentioning scams from Albania or Bolivia or who knows where. Or probably all of the above. Happy Easter Gator Dave, from my church basement. Or somewhere.


Next up? Dave's other misplaced Binary Target: Monavie.

If you want to read their compensation plan, you can find it in plain view on their company website. Where Dave could find it, but of course he just assumes its another 1-2-4-8 Board Game. Like everything else?

Know Your Source: Gator Dave with a Criminal Past?

I don't like to slander people, or accuse them of things... but when they go around saying they're holier than thou, and crusaders for good - they'd better be good themselves or it can look really bad. I'll let others do the talking here, and you can make your own judgements.

Check out this post by an angry law enforcement officer:

http://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/Truth-Crime-Busters-gator-Dave-t344345.html&gopid=3984520#entry3984520

The reason why I am releasing this information is because I do not appreciate a life time criminal calling the law enforcement officers that place their lives on the line everyday corrupted. Being in law enforcement already is a thankless job; we simply don’t need attempted rapist, bar dunk and wife beater to defame our character.

Dave Thornton of the world is the problem in our society. Believe me I am just as angry with the fraudulent business practices that seem to pop up every week but having seasoned criminals like Dave Thornton to defend mine and our society’s interest causes us more harm than good. One glance at his criminal back ground will have any regulator to holt their investigation to stop pyramid and ponzi schemes. It doesn’t help when Dave calls every regulatory organization that keep us safe corrupted including the RCMP, all police forces, Industry Canada, the judges, the politicians, DSA (Direct selling association), BBB and of course every aspect of our government. It is easy to see that his actions are more harmful then helpful especially when he registered a company Crime Busters Now (CBN) in Quebec trying to confuse his site with the actual crimebusters.ca which is a legitimate police site registered in Ontario. When you enter Dave’s site it is easy to see that Crime Busters Now (CBN) is a revenue generating business through donations for his fake causes.
According to Dave himself he received thousands of dollars every month from concerned citizens many of whom are seniors who have fallen for his scam.

If you think you've found a scam, contact the RCMP, or Industry Canada yourself. Don't give money to this crook so that he can run around making websites to attack anyone he dislikes - whether they're doing anything illegal or not.

Baseless Attacks on the Internet?

You have to be very careful who you believe on the internet. If I didn't like someone, I could go and post horrible slanderous things and keep them up there indefinitely because of the amount of work it takes to get those comments removed - if its even possible.

We all need to do our due diligence, and the internet is a great tool to find information. But the source of that information is key. You'll find angry customers from any major corporation saying things about them in the blogosphere and message boards, so you always have to sift through these to find useful information. Most people know not to believe everything they read on the internet - like teachers used to tell us.

What's even worse is when someone claims to be a public defender on the internet, and starts making attacks on a person, a company or an organization. They may dress themselves up as a crusader for good - but how do you know they're not the one who is the scam, or has the ulterior motive to profit from the situation? What if someone who thinks they're doing a public service, and has some bad companies he targets, but then gets so high on himself that he attacks good ones too? Or what if he himself goes bad?

The example that prompted this is a guy I've been following recently who calls himself "gatordave" or Dave Thornton. He's created an official sounding organization called "Crimebustersnow", and claims to be defending the little guy against all manner of scams and schemes. Some of his targets are questionable companies. His investigation of the companies TTI and BIM seem to be have been picked up by mainstream consumer protection in the form of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show Marketplace here. Mr. Thornton has been following these 8-Ball Boardgame style borderline or actual pyramid schemes for years now, and seems to have a very legitimate point.

For more on Pyramid Schemes and the 8-Ball Model Thornton denounces, read Wikipedia.

Specifically note this passage:

Some network or multi-level marketing businesses, which sell real products and rely on the price differentials between the manufacturer's dispatch ramp and the retail counter, may verge on the borderline between ''smart'' and ''scam''. When a pyramid does involve a real product, such as Holiday Magic cosmetics in the United States in the 1970s, new "dealers" who've paid enrolling fees are encouraged, in addition to selling their products, to become "managers" and recruit more new "dealers" who will also pay enrolling fees. As the number of layers of the pyramid increases, new recruits find it harder and harder to sell the product because there are so many competing salesmen. Those near or at the top of the pyramid make a lot of money on their percentage of the enrolling fees and on commissions for the supplied products, but those at the bottom are left with inventories of products they can't sell. However, most multi-level marketing businesses are not pyramid schemes.

The last sentence there is the key. While Thornton is identifying SOME that seem to be the bad guys in the industry, are all his targets the same? On his website he claims to be investigating the following "Scams & Frauds":

• Students Worldwide
• Treasure Traders (TTI)
• BIM and Earnfirm
• Canadian Diamond Traders
• Departure Central
• Sum-It Club
• Ontario Police Association (!)
• Pigeon King
• Perfect4U - Onevision
• Global Wealth Trade
• MonaVie
• Anthony's Franchise
• ICF World Homes

That's a long list. Now I only discovered Thornton when reading about two companies I was approached about: the afore-mentioned BIM, and Global Wealth Trade from his list above. I'd previously heard of Monavie. I was surprised to see his discussion of the Ontario Police Association - provincial police as a target?

But my focus here is to show that Dave seems to start with his familiarity with the 1-2-4-8 pyramid fraud of "Women Empowering Women", and believe that every single network marketing company operates the same way. When in fact this is not the case at all - there are 4 major structures in network marketing:

Again, we reference Wikipedia:

• Stairstep Breakaway plans This type of plan is characterized as having representatives who are responsible for both personal and group sales volumes. Volume is created by recruiting and by retailing product. Various discounts or rebates may be paid to group leaders and a group leader can be any representative with one or more downline recruits. Once predefined personal and/or group volumes are achieved, a representative moves up a commission level. This continues until the representative's sales volume reaches the top commission level and "breaks away" from their upline. From that point on, the new group is no longer considered part of his upline's group and the multi-level compensation aspect ceases. The original upline usually continues to be compensated through override commissions and other incentives.

• Unilevel plans This type of plan is often considered the simplest of compensation plans. Uni-Level plans pay commissions primarily based on the number of levels a recipient is from the original representative who is purchasing the product. Commissions are not based on title or rank achieved. By qualifying with a minimum sales requirement, representatives earn unlimited commissions on a limited number of levels of downline recruited representatives.

• Matrix plans This type of plan is similar to a Uni-Level plan, except there is a also limited number of representatives who can be placed on the first level. Recruits beyond the maximum number of first level positions allowed are automatically placed in other downline (lower level) positions. Matrix plans often have a maximum width and depth. When all positions in a representative's downline matrix are filled (maximum width and depth is reached for all participants in a matrix), a new matrix may be started. Like Uni-Level plans, representatives in a matrix earn unlimited commissions on limited levels of volume with minimal sales quotas.

• Binary plans: A binary plan is a multilevel marketing compensation plan which allows distributors to have only two front-line distributors. If a distributor sponsors more than two distributors, the excess are placed at levels below the sponsoring distributor's front-line. This "spillover" is one of the most attractive features to new distributors since they need only sponsor two distributors to participate in the compensation plan. The primary limitation is that distributors must "balance" their two downline legs to receive commissions. Balancing legs typically requires that the number of sales from one downline leg constitute no more than a specified percentage of the distributor's total sales.

Both Global Wealth Trade and Monavie are binary-based Network Marketing models, with real products (the former with designer jewellery and the latter with bottles of healthy blend of juice). Both companies have a variety of ways to make money, from direct retailing to consumers, through team commissions based on the product sales of the team of distributors working with them, and bonuses or incentives based on other activities that assist in the promotion of the company's products. And the binary system itself has been in use in varying forms for almost 2 decades by companies like Usana, Market America and more.

But Thornton seems to assume that just because they use the binary plan with 2 frontline distributors - if you choose to participate in the team compensation model - that this is another example of the boardgame. In fact that's exactly what he says:

CrimeBustersNow has concluded a reevaluation of what we have once again confirmed to be another “shell corporation” masking the familiar and common illegal 1-2-4-8- “endless chain” recruiting pyramid scheme.

At the very least thats misinformed and incorrect. But he doesn't stop there. He starts inventing libelous claims like:

is in fact simply another such “Cookie Cutter”1-2-4-8 fraudulent pyramid scheme that is mathematically doomed to meet its mathematical demise and simply collapse with many victims losing hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars, in this international money-laundering fraudulent scheme, if the international racketeer and founder of this “shell corporation”,

Now that's crossing the line. He's making baseless attacks over the internet, knowing that its very difficult to get anything shut down without a very time-consuming and expensive lawsuit. And one where the best case for the company is that Thornton can no longer attack the company - since he admits himself he has no money to pay for damages.

This is obviously one of his goals:

These abhorrent and cowardly crooks fear litigation with CrimeBustersNow, refusing CrimeBustersNow offer to simply have a judge quietly decide the legality of their pyramid selling format.

If they were legal, that would be their best approach. They have chosen, instead, to use their monetary “muscle” and their victim’s millions, in a cowardly attack on the website of CrimeBustersNow in order to suppress, from the public, the unmasked truth of their illegal operation.

They know, in the judge’s ruling, they will be deemed an illegal pyramid scheme, as was Alan Kippax, head racketeer of Treasure Traders International.

It is why they fear the courts, and why they fear CrimeBustersNow.

My guess is if they did get his website shut down, it was because he was posting libelous comments and his service provider has in their Terms and Conditions for people NOT to do things like that on a site hosted by their service. Because that opens them up to lawsuits. And they have every right to protect themselves and sanction him when he goes around breaking their rules.

This is vigilante justice at best.

But at worse, it could be something more. Read this, from another target of Thornton's - Canadian Diamond Traders.

They had a very different experience with Thornton:

Crime Busters Now; A Front for Extortion!

What is a company to do when they find themselves the victim off blackmail? What if the blackmailers are charged criminals posing as an anti crime organization? CDT finds itself in the position of being coerced for a payoff in exchange for not being a victim of unwarranted slander. CDT had one thing going in their favor; this particular criminal organization falls under a particular category of wrong doers, “Stupid Criminals”! It is one thing to launch a public smear campaign on a company, then attempt to blackmail them in private. But to make your demands on a taped conversation and reiterate those demands in writing is foolish and will be the undoing of this criminal element.

So it seems that Thornton hides behind the internet in attacking companies, hoping they'll take him to court - where if anyone ever proves to the court that they're NOT illegal, that he'll then work for them. But if they don't go after him, he'll keep making baseless attacks with impunity.

Whether you like network marketing or not - and that's your own prerogative, nobody likes pyramid schemes and they should be rooted out. But e-vigilantes should not be able to run around attacking legitimate businesses and the people that work with them. That's abhorrent as well.

Dave - you MAY have started with good intentions, but in the end you seem intent on discrediting yourself with your lack of understanding of what is legitimate, and imperiled your cause by overreaching, and seeing conspiracies and schemes even where they don't exist.