Glenn W. Turner, 53 years old, was sentenced along with Edward G. Rechtor by Superior Court Judge Bernard J. Dougherty. 0000041122 00000 n And the Wells Fargo C-suite was looking the other way as employees, desperate to meet unrealistic sales quotas, opened millions of fake bank and credit card accounts. 748 - IN THE MATTER OF HOLIDAY MAGIC, INC., ET AL. they indicted me on aiding and abetting running a pyramid scheme. 0000006135 00000 n 0000004119 00000 n . Mencken, Mr. Maxa says, would have loved Glenn Turner as one of those colorful rogues who enliven the American scene, a sort of cross between Elmer Gantry and Charles Ponzi, whose name is to financial pyramids what Tutankhamen's is to the original. 0000031782 00000 n PHOENIX Glenn W. Turner, creator of the "Dare to Be Great" motivational plan, surrendered to Arizona authorities today to face 126 counts of fraud and other charges after waiving extradition. Our intent was to help people. A list of over 350 print sources on paper chain letters and pyramid schemes. More than 88,000 people have invested about $44 million in various organizations operated by Turner, according to Federal Trade Commission figures cited by Attorney General Bob Corbins office in 1980. The Arizona case marked the first felony conviction for Turner, who built a fortune around his Orlando-based pyramid sales 20 years ago. 0000008424 00000 n As it turned out, investors would have to pay $5,000 apiece to participate in the program, which revolved around distributorships for sales of motivational cassettes, classes and books. Eventually, the truth comes out. These circumstances have led us into a society that is both more cynical and more predatory, both more receptive to and encouraging of outright fakers. Unsatisfied investors also filed lawsuits. [5][29], William Penn Patrick bought Mind Dynamics in 1970. The empire collapsed in the early 1970s when authorities accused Turner of violating laws against pyramid sales, in which investors at the top make a fortune and those who get in later lose money. Last month Turner, who turned 53 on Wednesday, and Rector, 57, were convicted on one count of conspiracy, nine counts of fraud, and nine counts of running an illegal pyramid sales scheme. Bids on the Castle property will be advertised over the next few weeks to notify any other bidders of the pending sale. United States Senate election in Florida, 1974, "Meet the con man who sold America on 'fake it till you make it', "Dare to be Great, Inc! JrsJk**j;{:[Z{&N. Thus one gets sentences such as Meanwhile, in a downtown Frankfurt prison, thirtyeightyearold Turner astounded a U.S. State Department official who visited his cell to explain that the British had requested his arrest on possible charges of fraud in England. Fine time to find out Turner's age. [3], In 1973, Holiday Magic's proceedings were prohibited by the Market Court of Sweden, and a fine of 2 million Swedish kronor was imposed. Attorneys for the two said their convictions would be appealed and asked that they be freed on bond until their appeals are heard. Some "schemes" are specifically developed to sidestep Pyramid Scheme legislation by offering a "product" or "service". Generally, the product or service is of poor quality, overpriced, or has no purpose other than as a ploy to give the company the appearance of legality. L|B@9`CwX}LKC 124., July 6, 1977. Those in the positions of Instructor General, Trainer General, and Senior General were required to take the training. Illustrated. The election of Ronald Reagan marked the beginning of an era of worshiping wealth, one in which more and more people came to believe that anything that made money was by definition a success. High by today's standards but even more powerful based on the times. Turner and his best. Traditionally, businesses have had to state their returns using metrics that can only be faked by lying. Koscot Interplanetary, Inc. was an Orlando, Florida based multi-level marketing cosmetic company selling mink oil-based cosmetics, owned by Glenn Wesley Turner (19342020). But nowhere has the ethos of fake it found more fertile soil than in Silicon Valley, where the line between optimism and deceit can admittedly be a fine one. [16] Katz's Everybody's Business: An Almanac also referred to Holiday Magic as a "pyramid sales organization". In the lawsuit, Avon Products' claimed that "Holiday Magic employees distributed leaflets accusing Avon of goon squads, paying off The District attorney's office.."[7], In June 1973, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Holiday Magic,[8] charging Patrick with "bilking some 80,000 people out of more than $250 million through his Holiday Magic cosmetics and soap empire. (Free Speech issue - dismissed), Juice Plus AKA National Safety Associates, European Grouping of Marketing Professionals, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holiday_Magic&oldid=1140202664, Companies based in San Rafael, California, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles needing clarification, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2009, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Holiday Magic, Inc. v. 0000003018 00000 n Turner had a talent for making people believe in him. 0000004799 00000 n "Pyramid Sales: Hearing Before the Subcommittee for Consumers of the Committee on Commerce, United States Congress", 1974, United States Congress, Pp. Glenn W Turner, who started in Network Marketing in the late 60s and you will be blown away by the income earnings that he shares from that time. 0000041306 00000 n 0000003839 00000 n It is apparent from this Court's findings of fact that the defendants are promoting a type of scheme commonly known as a pyramid operation. Turner, though, had hired a lawyer for his sentencing Thursday. 0000006933 00000 n [28] Holiday Magic distributors were invited, though not required, to attend the Leadership Dynamics Institute self-improvement sessions at a cost of $1000 each. 0000002742 00000 n [5], The State of California filed suit against Holiday Magic in December, 1972. Turner himself offers one cautionary tale. mid plans has focused on a single organization, Glenn W. Turner Enter-prises, Inc., a holding company with 68 subsidiaries3 including the two most successful and most maligned pyramid schemes, DG and its sister company Koscot Interplanetary, Inc. [25] The Office of the State Attorney General in Maine, United States cites In re Holiday Magic, Inc., 84 F.T.C. 0000041122 00000 n In a fitting finale, Turner, stopped for good and all, is saved by a showy evangelist from New Orleans. The judge refused and the men were led away to jail by deputy sheriffs after they gave their wallets, watches and jewelry to friends in the courtroom. Donate A technicality of the law is what got me. By the time he died in 2020, it took more than a year for a newspaper reporter to stumble across his Legacy.com obituary and make note of his death. Rector said the men -- Douglas Beekman of Apopka and Richard Mailman of Altamonte Springs -- never voiced such a concern to him. 0000005760 00000 n We are forever suspicious, convinced someone else wants to profit at our expense. As he was led off to jail, he told reporters: The good that I have done outweighs the bad. A group of a half-dozen former Challenge participants, who would not give their names, said after the sentencing that Turner and Rector did nothing wrong. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Dougherty also ordered Turner and Rector to pay $44,000 each in fines to be distributed to victims. Although Turner was never convicted of a criminal charge, he received probation in a mailfraud case after arranging with the prosecution to plead no contest to a lesser charge. 0000004278 00000 n Cryptocurrency arrived, basically a fake it till you make it form of money. As we transitioned from a society that manufactured things to one whose products were intangible, reality was increasingly in the eye of the beholder or the pitchman. [17] Turner described it as one of the first "pyramid marketing" companies in America. 0000001660 00000 n uOf2v]IM{7\~CPWb=sVX\IQ2ec )^y&wM9t>5YO! 0000007782 00000 n %%EOF ", United States Congress. The company called Zolene was about to go out of business. Glenn Turner was, as he liked to tell anyone within earshot of his pitch, sharecropper's son 'and a gradeschool dropout and had a harelip (albeit corrected by surgery) who had lifted himself. Annotated bibliography on chain letters and pyramid schemes. Anyone can read what you share. But his empire collapsed after state and federal investigators accused him of operating pyramid schemes that bilked thousands of investors. In SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises, Inc., 474 F.2d 476, 482 (9th Cir. 0000003839 00000 n And as Turner understood, making lots of money will get you almost anything, including an invitation to lecture at the Harvard Business School. 0000001769 00000 n "Challenge had a positive effect on all of our lives," said one woman who was crying in the hallway outside the courtroom. Jurors found them innocent of 27 counts of securities violations involving Challenge Inc., a motivational company. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. U.S. District Court documents in Orlando indicate there are dozens of other Turner creditors, but it is unlikely they will be paid from any proceeds from the Castles sale, officials said. The saying became so pervasive in Amway that it would be the title of a 1980s expos by Phil Kerns. But as Turners saga shows, theres a dark side baked into the fake it mentality: the fakers who attempt to win success through fraud, then never make good on their promises. Turner barely escaped jail in 1975 when a federal jury in Florida was unable to reach a verdict after a nine-month fraud trial. "[23] One of the Holiday Magic Inc. cases was also cited by The University of Chicago Law Review[24] and the Columbia Law Review. The purpose of this Note is to investigate the One of them was Bob Hattaway, a former state legislator from Altamonte Springs who came to Arizona to testify for Turner. The House was supposed to grow with population. 0000004119 00000 n 271 0 obj "[7] Turner, attorney F. Lee Bailey, and eight others were also indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and mail fraud charges. The IRS, which had a $15 million claim, has been awarded a judgment of $9.275 million, but appraisals put the value of the Turner property at $1 million to $2 million. Turner and a partner, Edward Rector, 57, were sentenced to seven years in prison in Arizona in August on charges of operating a pyramid scheme there and defrauding investors through a self-motivational company called Challenge Inc. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. 0000000016 00000 n In the low-interest-rate environment of the past decade, investors put up money with little diligence, and fake it till you make it turned toxic. Turner packaged this dubious enterprise with a religious fervor that would make Billy Sunday look like the Archbishop of Canterbury. 0000006496 00000 n Lawyers for Turner and Rector asked Dougherty to let their clients remain free while they appealed their convictions. A nine-month trial ended in a hung jury. Food delivery services such as Grubhub and Postmates included restaurants on their platforms that didnt have contracts with them. The state officer who conducted Turner's investigation noted, "Mr. Turner has demonstrated to this officer an uncanny ability to confuse issues and extend compliments.". 84 F.T.C. Summary of this case from Great Western Bank & Trust v . Attached to the side stands connected a lone, cylindrical tower that contains a stairwell on the inside. A lot of books have been written about Mr. Turner and today weve put the final period in the final chapter of the saga of Glenn Turner, Lotstein said. One bought a cosmetics distributorship for $4,500 and became entitled to sell distributorships to others, pocketing a fat commission. 0000031956 00000 n Turner's fame and wealth was to be an inspiration for others to buy franchises so that "they could all be rich and successful like him". In re HOLIDAY MAGIC SECURITIES AND ANTITRUST LITIGATION., James J. ), it's too late to put the book down. Warren., 497 F.2d 687., C.A.Wis. The sentencing of Dare to be Great supersalesman Glenn Turner, convicted of operating an illegal pyramid scam in Arizona, has been delayed for a week. But Turner seems to have genuinely convinced himself he was offering the little people a splendid opportunity. "If anyone was hurt in our program, I am extremely sorry. It is here that Mr. Maxa shows unusual ability to compress tedious and protracted legal wrangles (one trial lasted nine months) into an absorbing account. 0000003563 00000 n "Franchising in Hard Times: Hearing Before the Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives. 0000032500 00000 n 0000003297 00000 n Corbins office won a civil case against Turner over Challenge in 1983, ordering him to pay $1.5 million in restitution and $1 million in penalties. 1973), participants in a pyramid sales scheme were found to be security holders, since they invested their funds in a common scheme dependent for success directly upon the collective sales efforts of the organization. This is a good little book about an earnest con artist who ripped off the American public for $75 million. In my business, theres just no faking it, Stewart said. But when the claim has little to no basis in reality, it will almost certainly lead to failure and, as Turner discovered, to oblivion. Turner, 57, served nearly two-thirds of a seven-year term in Arizona for fleecing investors in a scheme for distributing motivational tapes. The unfinished castle, its boathouse, stables and surrounding 79 acres will be sold to the highest bidder after a federal court hearing April 26, according to court documents. endobj Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. "They come from preachers, lawyers, housewives, plumbers, carpenters," Dougherty said. ={w5d[#"zM#h:.d\r,&4* 76I\@yH'H}T4idJq$nVsL(sXk TN4%8k;|PqK+I:p*K"&Z{Z;o;}X8z}r%. 0000001660 00000 n United States House of Representatives. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. A few of their supporters cried as the sentences were read. Holiday Magic was a multi-level marketing organization, founded in 1964, by William Penn Patrick (19301973) in the United States. When a federal judge lumped together 1,000 of those lawsuits into a single class-action suit seeking nearly $1 billion, Turner went bankrupt. 0000003018 00000 n [15] Larry Stephen Huff, another key individual in the company, served two years in a Federal Prison, for charges related to a Ponzi scam (unrelated to Holiday Magic).[21]. [28] The Mind Dynamics course was described as providing "a means of achieving personal success through the conscious use of the subconscious mind". Turner, Rechtor and a third man, Alan K. Oaks, were accused of defrauding Arizona residents who were promised incomes of $1,000 to $3,000 a month if they invested $5,000 to become sales people for Challenge Inc. Investors were subjected to highly emotional sales and promotion techniques in a process described by company insiders as jacking up prospects, Assistant Attorney General R. Jeffrey Woodburn said during the trial. Some of the most famous pyramid schemes in U.S. history. Glenn Turner's Koscot charges $2,000 for the right to distribute "kosmetics." Holiday Magic (Bus. Koscot Interplanetary was a company from Orlando, Florida, selling mink oil-based cosmetics and was started by Glenn W. Turner in 1967. As Mr, Maxa notes, Americans have always had a weakness for successful rogues. 5 OF THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION ACT AND SEC. But the notion that you can fake it until you make it began to spread through multi-level marketing efforts such as Turners, where studies show few earn a profit and deception is rife. ", Nevertheless, Dougherty said, the men deserved prison terms because "some of these victims suffered great emotional and financial harm by your actions.". %%EOF Employing a pyramid selling scheme and an evangelical, downhome platform style, Turner cajoled thousands of ordinary folks into putting up varying amounts, in return for which they would sell Turner's beauty products. In August 1972, he was charged with "86 counts of sale of unregistered securities and failing to register as a dealer". Although Turner did eventually get some cosmetics on the market, the pyramid idea was always at the heart of his operation, accounting for $75 million of its total $115 million in sales; and he started a second company, merchandising a howtobeasuccess course called Dare to Be Great on the same principle. Targets for citations in Chain Letter Evolution. 256 pages. 0000037159 00000 n Turner ran in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate election in Florida, 1974, but lost. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. The company had been investigated by the Market Court of Sweden,[3] United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the State of California. Mr. Turner and Mr. Rechtor, who also received seven years, were. "The first time I ever heard those words from those men was in this courtroom," Rector said. 2/10/75, p. 38) and Bestline . [1] In 1971, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Koscot, charging restraint of trade. The Dream, a podcast about multi-level marketing, discussed Holiday Magic and William Penn Patrick. 72-390. He was paroled in November but must be supervised by. [10] The FTC's decision on Koscot set a precedent for defining if a company is engaging in illegal pyramiding. 0000001036 00000 n DARE TO BE GREAT. Turner and his best friend, Edward G. Rector, were each sentenced to seven years in state prison. Turner and Rechtor, who also received seven years, were convicted in July of 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud and promoting a pyramid scheme. Page across from the article title are continuing to work to improve archived! 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A few of their supporters cried as the sentences were read Committee on Small Business, theres just faking.