I'm personaly a bit saddened by this news. I knew Don very well personally having worked with him back in the day before the DNC. We all partied as hard as we worked and we all made 3-5k a week doing phone sales. For some of us, a "day" consisted of rolling in around noon - 1 o'clock...making about 20-30 phone calls and closing 5-10k in new business and rolling out to hit happy hour at the local shit hole bar. Don was one of the best salesmen I've ever known and while I wanted to kick his ass on more than one occasion, he was a decent guy all in all. It's a shame he had to go out this way. :goodnight:
Push So you're saying the guy was falsely accused here, or are you saying "salesmen" equates to "scam artist" (no offense intended just confused as why you said one thing and this article makes the guy out to be a total defauder of thousands of people)
I'm not the judge or jury - but having worked with him I know he had mad skills when it came to pitching products. His product at the time I worked for him was the "Making Money" package sold via infomercial - just happened to be the longest running informercial at the time. This was the original biz opp. You or anyone can read an article and see he was "charged" with fraud and think him to be a scam artist but I personally had clients who made money with it. This is no different than any biz opp we mail today. Are YOU or the advertisr a scam artist because you dropped 20MM on some fucked up work from home product/gig/deal/etc. and no one made a fuckiin' penny? Nope. Just as long as you got paid you're cool with it. You might be suprised to know EVERY conversation was recorded. NO sale was approved without it. If the salesperson used misleading words - i.e. you 'can' make money...you 'will' make money, etc. the sale was voidxed. He had the first compliance dept. I ever saw and this was BEFORE the DNC and a lot of regulartory bodies that are in place today. Now as far as the vitamins are concerned (I never was involved with that product) - anybody can get shit like this made (insert Acai, ResV, dick pills, etc.) and get it bottled up (hello molding box!) and as long as you use the disclaimer "The FDA does not acknowledge the claims of this product as it is not tested..." or something to that effect, you can sell it. Did people complain?? Yup. I get complaints from my mailings but it doesn't mean I don't have legit data with all the opt in - single - double - or otherwise. He pitched it - and damn - people bought it and failed. After enough complaints someone is bound to do something about it. The bigger you get, the bigger target you become. He got stuck by some charges and took the easy way out. I can't say why he went down that road but it is what it is. I think it's a sad end to his life. A LOT of people have become big players in industries like ours or call centers because of Don and I don't think it's cool to shit talk the guy because he killed himself in jail. The guy was an industry leader and innovator - and it's a shame he went out like this.
Don Lapre and other marketers of the era basically invented the continuity biz op offer. I also knew Don although not as well as Jason did. Don used to call me back in the mid 90s to pick my brain on email marketing. He was specifically interested in using early scraper tools like Earthonline's Sonic program to harvest targeted email addresses. You have to put things into the perspective of when all this happened. Don's most successful program was the Making Money kit which I'll admit I never bought but I did buy his competitor Brad Richdale's Secrets To Making Money Now package. While I never made millions of dollars placing tiny classified ads in newspapers all around the country from my one bedroom apartment. I did learn a fucking ton about the psychology of sales and both Brad Richdale and Don Lapre were the original catalyst that got me thinking about using email marketing. Don kind of lost touch with the times when he started pushing those MLM vitamin programs and we fell out of communication. I question whether or not he actually did anything wrong. I mean if someone is stupid enough to believe that they are going to make zillions of dollars selling vitamins then they probably deserve to go to jail for being that dumb. There were / are tons of legitimate business opportunities and products to buy and sell out there. Don picked a dumb product to market and this is the sad result of what can happen when you appeal to the lowest common denominator.
There are many sides to every story and everyone will see what they want to see - a "hope" or a "scam" or a "product FWIW". I do not know the man, what he did and what he was accused of doing, but death by suicide (which it looks like) is always just sad.
According to the indictment, from April 2003 through October 2007, Lapre allegedly conspired with others to defraud thousands of victims all across the country by encouraging them to invest in an Internet-based business. The "business" primarily consisted of selling the Greatest Vitamin in the World (GVW) over the Internet and the opportunity to sell the opportunity to do the same thing to others. At the height of the scheme, Lapre had enlisted approximately 226,794 people to sell a limited number of products via individual websites. Along with selling tens of thousands of Internet-based businesses which were essentially worthless, Lapre fraudulently provided his investor/victims, known as "Independent Advertisers" (IAs), with false vitamin sales records. These records encouraged IAs to purchase additional advertising and services in the hope of obtaining commissions including $1,000 checks. Lapre also fraudulently sold bulk Internet traffic to IAs while claiming that it was targeted to individuals who were seeking to either buy vitamins or invest in similar businesses. GVW sales representatives regularly signed up victims as IAs even if they did not own a computer. During the course of the scheme, at least 220,000 victim/IAs were defrauded of approximately $51.8 million. During this same period, approximately $6.3 million in commissions were paid to approximately 5,000 victim/IAs. http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/PR_06152011_Lapre.html
