Copy, Paste And Profit

This Week In Blunders – April 27-May 3

“Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money.” – Carl Sagan

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“Money in minutes.” No trading experience required. “Copy, paste and profit.”

If getting rich were this easy, no one would give away their secrets – or even sell them for $400 a month.

But the IM Mastery Academy, its officers and sales team, have duped consumers out of $1.2 billion since 2018 with these cheesy pitches, according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Nevada on Thursday.

The company, run by white people, has allegedly been preying on mostly youthful Blacks and Latinos all over the world with multilevel marketing schemes and bogus training courses, the complaint alleges.

“Most IML instructors are salespeople masquerading as top-notch investment professionals,” regulators allege.

One “master educator” had “no formal investment training, no investment licenses or accreditation, and had only minimal trading activity in two small brokerage accounts,” according to the complaint.

“Parents report that an online trading course is in fact a pyramid scheme that is ‘brainwashing’ young people and separating them from their friends and loved ones,” reads the headline on a Spanish publication, El Pais International.

You can lose a lot of friends selling multilevel marketing scams, and in a matter of months, even your family won’t recognize you.

“They have kidnapped our children,” one woman told El Pais. “They have turned her inside out like a sock.”

Many customers who paid for trading training also got recruited into a global army of social media hucksters. They were pitched the easy luxe life – including private jets and exotic vacations, but more than 80% of them made less than $500 a year, according to the complaint.

Beware of the B-word: “Believe.” Here’s a pitch from top IMF salesmen. (Photo credit: FTC, Nevada complaint.)

The social media blitz became so egregious that even IML owner Chris Terry couldn’t take it. (And if you want to gag on some serious get-rich-quick bullshit, check out Terry’s preachy YouTube channel.)

Terry apparently knew what was coming. Here’s what he said in a June 2021 message to top salespeople, according to the complaint:

“I went through Instagram, I’ve been going through a lot of people’s accounts, and I’m mortified by the lifestyle claims that we have. We’re going to end up getting shut down by the feds. I promise you. This is horrible what’s going on out there. It’s not a good thing. … I’m looking at myself, I’m looking at a lot of you top leaders’ Instagrams. The jets, the watches, the diamonds, the cars… we got to adhere to certain laws that are in place. And if we don’t then there’s consequences. The consequences are that we will be shut down.”

Truer words were never spoken – at least not by this alleged grifter.

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Take the money and run

After a Brinks truck recently spilled $300,000 on the street, and dozens of passersby grabbed the cash, Business Blunders asked readers what they would do in this situation.

More than half of those responding to last week’s poll said “finders keepers” or simply “screw Brinks.” (The armored truck company is no saint. In February it admitted to criminal charges for illicitly running money across the border.)

Here are a few comments from readers:

• “I would grab all the money that I could carry. Money is the root of all GOOD - it buys food for our families, care from our doctors, envy from our enemies.”

• “I confess, I voted for finders keepers. A kind of financial vacation from living paycheck to paycheck.”

• “Leave it there. At my age the cost of leaning over exceeds the value of a few bills. Also, if I didn't see it coming out of the truck, I'd assume it was left from a drug deal and the dealers might happen to be coming back for it. Better if they don't see me taking it.”

• “I’d probably take it home, and try and contact Brinks and let them know I had one of their bags of cash, and how can I get it back to them? Because there probably would be a reward for such a find. On the other hand, Brinks is (theoretically) insured. So are you really taking money 'from' them? … Either way, a reward - if only a stock of those bills - would be customary. And they could write it off. But jail time? How to prove you knew it belonged to Brinks when you found it/took it?”

So what would I do? Me? Mr. Business Blunders? The court jester of all corporate folly?

I’d like to think I’d do the right thing. What I’ve learned over the years, though, is that if you’re going to snatch other people’s money, make sure you grab an extra million or two for your legal defense. That’s how the big boys do it.

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This must drive Luigi Mangione crazy

Poor Luigi, still sitting in jail for allegedly shooting a health care insurance CEO in cold blood while the industry’s misanthropy keeps coming to light.

On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint against three of the nation’s largest health insurance companies and three large insurance brokers, alleging a multimillion kickback scheme.

The complaint names insurers Aetna Inc., Elevance Health (formerly known as Anthem), and Humana. It also brokers, eHealth, GoHealth and SelectQuote.

The big insurance companies paid the big brokers hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks for enrollments into the insurers’ Medicare Advantage plans, the complaint alleges.

Companies said they plan on fighting the allegations.

“Health care companies that attempt to profit from kickbacks will be held accountable,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Granston of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “We are committed to rooting out illegal practices by Medicare Advantage insurers and insurance brokers that undermine the interests of federal health care programs and the patients they serve.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this is right. But it’s getting easier to understand why so many people are cheering for an alleged murderer as a folk hero.

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Trump’s Barbie recession

Stocks staged a big comeback this week following hints that China might be considering tariff talks and a better-than expected jobs report. But not even President Donald Trump is writing off the possibility of a recession.

Trump also isn’t worried about the possibility of rising inflation and empty store shelves due to his tariff tantrums.

“Somebody said, ‘oh, the shelves are gonna be open,’” Trump told reporters Wednesday. "Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."

The recession may have already begun. The gross domestic product report for the first quarter came in this week showing a 0.3% decline. Two quarters of decline is the classic definition of a recession but a recession has to be officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which typically happens long after much of the damage is done.

Noted economist Torsten Slok released a frightening forecast this week predicting empty shelves within weeks and a recession by summer. The report doesn’t mess around with vague probabilities. It includes an unusually precise timeline of what’s to come.

If this plays out as Torsten predicts, and there are few benefits to come of it, this may go down as one of the biggest presidential economic blunders of all time.

Trump may have to take a cue from Barbie: “The real world isn’t what I thought it was.”

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