Why Herbalife Doesn't Work - Work from Home Overload page 2

Introduction | Work from Home page 1 2 3 | Small Business | Trying Anything to Sell page 1 2 | Universal Distributor Saturation | Active Ingredient? | Summary

My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign.  It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it.

1. I trusted the information.  "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth.
2. It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it.

Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them.  This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.

With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around.  I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message.  I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track.  Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages.

Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well.  Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches.  These "success stories" were their undoing.

Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch.  An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife.  That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%.

I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam".  They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento.  The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up!  I was impressed!

Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was.

Eventually I found it.  About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round".  They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.

I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!

Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 30 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business.  They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors".

These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them,  the hatred subsided.