John Breyault

John Breyault, a nationally-recognized public interest advocate and consumer fraud expert, leads the National Consumers League’s (NLC) public interest advocacy. He has testified before Congress and federal agencies dozens of times on a range of consumer issues. His work has been cited in a large number of national publications (e.g., Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The New York Times, POLITICO, NPR, etc.). Prior to joining NCL John served as director of research at Amplify Public Affairs, helping launch the Internet public affairs practice. John also worked as a financial analyst at Sprint and at the American Center for Polish Culture. A graduate of George Mason University, he currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife, two daughters and two mischievous cats.

Stacie Bosley

Stacie Bosley is an economist with a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. She is the Kahlert Professor of Economics at Hamline University, Minnesota. She has served as an expert witness for the FTC in pyramid scheme cases. Her work on MLMs has been published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, the Journal of Financial Crime, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics and Economic Inquiry.

Douglas M Brooks

Douglas M. Brooks is an attorney who has litigated class actions against MLM schemes, including Webster v. Omnitrition International, Inc., 779 F.3d 776 (9th Cir. 1996), cert. den., 519 U.S. 865 (1996), as well as cases against Herbalife, Nu Skin, Melaleuca and Consumers Buyline and others. He has also represented, pro bono, consumer advocates who have been sued by MLM companies and cults, including NXIVM v. Ross Institute, 364 F.3d 471 (2nd Cir. 2004), cert. den., 543 U.S. 1000 (2004). He was featured in the award winning documentary “Betting on Zero” in which he represented victims of the MLM Herbalife. He operates www.pyramidscheme.law as a resource for people studying the MLM industry.

Tracy Coenen

Tracy Coenen is a forensic accountant, fraud investigator, and expert witness with more than 30 years of experience uncovering financial misconduct. She is the founder of Pink Truth, a website launched nearly 20 years ago to expose the realities behind Mary Kay and the multi-level marketing industry. Pink Truth was one of the earliest platforms to document the patterns of MLM harm before it was cool to expose these scams. The site has had staying power, despite Mary Kay executives saying in 2006 that in time Pink Truth and sites like it would be “rendered meaningless.”

Through her work, Tracy has analyzed investigated more than 600 financial frauds. She testifies in court as an expert witness, and believes that telling a story with the numbers is the most effective way to convince judges and juries. Known for her ability to break down complex financial issues into clear, practical insights, Tracy combines investigative expertise with a direct and often sharp perspective on the MLM industry.

Kathleen ‘Kati’ Daffan

Kati is a founding partner of the public-interest law firm Vaca Daffan LLP.  Previously, in 15-plus years as a litigator, manager, and leader at the FTC, Kati Daffan developed expertise on topics across the agency's consumer protection mission. As Assistant Director in the Division of Marketing Practices, she led litigation and initiatives related to multilevel marketing, deceptive business opportunities, AI-related fraud, illegal repair restrictions, and payment mechanisms used to facilitate scams. Kati also served as Acting Deputy General Counsel of the FTC and was Attorney Advisor to Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. Prior to joining the FTC, Kati was a Skadden Fellow representing low-wage workers at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House and clerked for Judge Shira A. Scheindlin in the Southern District of New York. She graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Law School, and is admitted to practice law in DC and New York.

Glenn A. Danas

Glenn A. Danas is a Partner at Clarkson, where he chairs the firm’s Appellate and Employment Litigation practice groups. He has argued 65 appeals in state and federal courts nationwide, including multiple unanimous wins in the California Supreme Court. Glenn’s appellate work spans petitions for review, extraordinary writs, cert petitions, and amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit. His employment practice focuses on wage and hour, PAGA actions, misclassification, and mandatory arbitration. The Daily Journal has named him among the Top 100 Attorneys in California, and he was named as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 2025.

Lucas Dixon

Lucas Dixon is an academic at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, where he teaches in the Schools of Business and Health. His research explores how the ‘success industry’ of pop psychology and spiritual advice affects consumers’ beliefs and decisions. His work examines the psychological factors underlying precarious forms of work, such as multilevel marketing and get-rich-quick schemes. He also developed the Manifestation Scale, measuring magical thinking about goal attainment, which has been applied to financial and health decision-making.

Gladys

Gladys, AKA MLM Exit, came from a background in tourism, sales, and customer service. In 2019, she discovered the Anti-MLM movement on YouTube. In 2021 she started creating educational Anti-MLM content in English and Spanish when she realized that the targets of the MLM companies are immigrants and the Latino community. She is currently working on her website which will be available soon and is intended to make the process of leaving an MLM easier. Until then, Gladys’s links can be found here.

Sydney Graham

Sydney Graham holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Communication from the University of Missouri with a research focus on stigma, identity, and gender in organizational and occupational contexts. Her recent work examined how gendered, religious, and neoliberal discourses and stigma shaped individual consultants’ experiences in multilevel marketing. She now works as a consultant and researcher, helping organizations guide employees through culture change, tension, and workplace transformation.

Claudia Groß

Claudia Groß is an associate professor at TIAS School for Business & Society in the Netherlands. Her research, published in leading journals such as The Journal of Business Ethics, The Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Human Relations, and Journal of Marketing Management, explores the impact of organizational design on (un)ethical behavior in organizations. She is widely recognized as a leading academic expert on multilevel marketing in Europe. See https://www.tias.edu/en/faculty/claudia-gross-105 and https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0102-6902.

Brandie Hadfield

Brandie Hadfield spent the better part of a decade in a commercial cult, and today she is the President and co-facilitator of the non-profit Flipping The Pyramid Foundation. A student therapist in supervision, Brandie offers peer support to former MLM representatives. Brandie believes everyone deserves freedom of mind, so she speaks out about abuses of power and coercion perpetrated by MLM scams on Substack and Instagram. 

Steven Hassan

Steven Hassan, PhD, MA, MEd, LMHC, NCC, is a mental health professional, forensics expert, and Fielding Fellow who has been helping people leave destructive cults since 1976 when his family deprogrammed him from the Moon cult. He founded and directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, Inc., a consulting and media production company based in Massachusetts. He is the author of Combating Cult Mind Control, Freedom of Mind, and The Cult of Trump.

His expertise has been featured in major media outlets such as The Associated Press (AP), The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, NBC, and The New York Times. He has developed the BITE Model©, the world’s first scientifically validated construct for evaluating authoritarian control, and hosts the podcast Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steven Hassan.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultexpert/

Substack: https://stevenhassan.substack.com

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@drstevenhassan

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dr.steven.hassan

Twitter/X: https://x.com/CultExpert

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cultexpert.freedomofmind.com

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cultexpert

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenhassan/

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@cultexpert

Jason Jones

Jason is a consumer protection litigator who represents individuals harmed by deceptive business practices, fraudulent schemes, and predatory companies, and was was counsel on a multi year nationwide putative class action against Herbalife and forty of its top distributors for the deceptive manner in which they operated their live event system. His practice focuses on cases involving multi-level marketing fraud, business opportunity scams, and the defense of consumer advocates exercising their First Amendment rights to warn others about fraudulent operations.

Prior to joining Mark Ferrer & Hayden, Jason served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. In that role, he developed and led consumer protection initiatives with a particular focus on protecting the District’s elderly residents from financial exploitation and fraud. He also handled False Claims Act matters, pursuing recoveries on behalf of the District in cases involving fraud against the government.

Dr. Kenan Kalaycı

Dr. Kenan Kalaycı is an experimental economist whose research focus is on behavioural economics and industrial organization. Kenan received his PhD in Economics from Tilburg University and is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Queensland. Kenan has been an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow between 2016-208 and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford in 2017-2018. Kenan's main research has been in the growing field of behavioural industrial organization, which is the study of markets incorporating insights from psychology and other related disciplines. Kenan has been one of the pioneers in the empirical study of this field, developing experimental methodology to study issues of spurious product differentiation and price discrimination in markets. His research has been published in the International Journal of Industrial Organisation, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, and Experimental Economics.

William Keep

William W. Keep, PhD is a professor of marketing emeritus and former dean of business and interim provost at The College of New Jersey. He has assisted state and federal prosecutors in the prosecution of pyramid schemes and has been quoted in the press (The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg/ BusinessWeek, Financial Times, New York Times, Forbes, etc.) as an expert on multilevel marketing. With Dr. Peter Vander Nat (senior economist, FTC, retired), Dr. Keep published academic articles on multilevel marketing, pyramid schemes, and the evolution of direct selling in the United States.

Meggan Lanahan

Meggan Lanahan is a former MLM insider, writer, podcaster, and legal researcher. After spending 14 years in Amway, she walked away with a deep understanding of the industry and now uses that insight to support others navigating their own recovery. Through her podcast, MLM Recovery Room, she offers a grounded, real-world perspective on what it takes to unpack the experience and move forward. Outside of her work, Meggan can usually be found making memes, creating music, or chasing adrenaline on roller coasters. 

Dariusz Łomowski

Director at the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) – Branch Bureau in Gdansk, Poland. More than twenty years ago Dariusz started at the Office’s media relations unit, later gained experience at product safety area and consumer law enforcement. For last five years he focuses on the market practices at consumer finances and alternative investments, including pyramid promotional schemes. He is attorney-at-law and a board member of the Legal Clinic Foundation – non-governmental organisation setting standards for 28 legal clinics in Poland.

 Brittany Morgon

Brittany Morgon, NBC-HWC is a board-certified health coach specializing in evidence-based, psychology-informed health behavior coaching. With a degree in Health Sciences from Arizona State University and 15 years of experience across food science, product development, and science communication, Morgon has built a platform at the intersection of health behavior and consumer protection. Her independent research examines how MLM recruitment structures enable health misinformation at scale — and the downstream consumer harm that follows, including dangerous supplement use, disordered eating patterns, and delayed medical care. She has written and spoken extensively on the psychological tactics MLMs use to recruit and retain participants, particularly within the health and wellness space, and is an active advocate for stronger industry accountability and clearer ethical standards for health and wellness professionals operating within multi-level marketing companies.

Máire O Sullivan

Lecturing at Munster Technological University in Ireland, Dr. Máire O Sullivan has written for The Conversation on the anti-MLM movement and researched MLM advertising targeting women in particular. Her PhD is from University College Cork. Research interests include MLMs, ponzi schemes and financial frauds, particularly those targeting women, as well as academic integrity and genAI. More information can be found at maireosullivan.com.

Jacob Ørmen

Jacob Ørmen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications, University of Copenhagen. He says “I am fascinated by how people and organizations manifest authority through communication. I am inspired by foundational questions in communication research around expertise, influence and opinion leadership and explore these in interdisciplinary projects. Currently, I pursue this agenda in studies of finance communication across social platforms, on digital media, and in social encounters through daily life.”

Bonnie Patten

Bonnie Patten is Executive Director of Truth in Advertising (TINA.org), a non-profit consumer advocacy organization focused on protecting consumers from false and deceptive marketing. Since its inception, TINA.org has filed more than 250 legal actions, and state and federal agencies have used its work in at least three pyramid scheme cases. Ms. Patten has testified before Congress on issues related to consumer protection, deceptive marketing and economic justice, and she is a regular commentator in the media including appearances on NBC, CBS, ABC, and BBC, in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Economist, and on podcasts such as The Dream. She is the 2019 recipient of the Florence Kelley Consumer Leadership Award by the National Consumers League. She earned her J.D. from Boston University and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bridget Read

Bridget Read is a features writer at New York magazine, reporting on housing inequality and the real estate industry for Curbed. Previously, she wrote for The Cut and was a culture writer at Vogue. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Melanie Ross Levin

Melanie Ross Levin serves as the State Representative for Delaware’s 10th District. Previously, she led Delaware’s Office of Women’s Advancement and Advocacy, where she helped advance major statewide initiatives including paid family leave, equal pay, and the nation’s first ban on child marriage.

In the General Assembly, Melanie has built a strong record of results, passing legislation on pay transparency, anti-trafficking protections, and utility shutoff safeguards. She is also a leading voice on consumer protection, sponsoring legislation to establish some of the strongest disclosure requirements in the country for multi-level marketing (MLM) companies—ensuring individuals have clear, upfront information about earnings and risks before participating.

Beyond her legislative work, Melanie serves as the Life & Legacy Manager at the Jewish Federation of Delaware and is helping lead the effort to build Delaware’s first educational Holocaust memorial in Dover. 

Kristen G. Simplicio

Kristen G. Simplicio is a Partner at Clarkson based in Washington, DC, where she focuses on consumer protection, false advertising, and illegal debt collection. Kristen represents workers misclassified as independent contractors by multilevel marketing companies. Her work has delivered meaningful industry change, including securing settlements with six mortgage servicers over unlawful fees and litigating class actions against predatory student loan servicers and fraudulent university enrollment practices. Earlier in her career, she litigated false advertising and RICO cases in California. She is a two-time DC Super Lawyers honoree and a member of NACA, AAJ, and Public Justice.

Monica Vaca

Monica Vaca is a founding partner of Vaca Daffan Law, a public interest law firm, and a 23-year veteran of the FTC. As Deputy Director for the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Monica worked on the full range of matters, from fraud to privacy violations. In other roles, she led initiatives, investigations, and cases against lenders, business opportunity sellers, telemarketers, online scams, and payment processors. Over the course of her career at the FTC, Monica worked to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds to consumers and injunctive relief that ended unlawful conduct. Previously, Monica worked for Legal Aid Chicago as an Equal Justice Fellow in the Women's Law Project, and clerked for Judge John F. Grady in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Monica is admitted to practice in Illinois (DC admission pending). She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Northwestern University School of Law.

Peter Vander Nat

Peter J. Vander Nat, Ph.D. (University of Notre Dame) served for 15+ years as senior economic expert at the FTC regarding pyramid schemes and has submitted numerous declarations to federal courts. Along with co-author Dr. Bill Keep, he has published articles on pyramid schemes vs. legitimate multilevel marketing. Upon retiring from the FTC in 2014, he remains an active expert witness for government prosecution of pyramid schemes.

John Whitelaw

John S. Whitelaw is the Advocacy Director for Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware. John has more than thirty years of experience representing low income and other vulnerable clients in various legal aid programs. Previously John was Co-Director of the Aging and Disabilities unit at the North Philadelphia office of Community Legal Services, Inc. of Philadelphia. For much of his career John has represented clients in matters involving government benefits (TANF, GA, Food Stamps or SNAP, and Medical Assistance) and the Social Security Administration. John has represented claimants at all administrative levels and in federal and state court. John has been a presenter at many national and regional trainings. John previously traveled all over the country as a trainer on SSI and Social Security Disability matters for the AARP National Training Project. John previously worked for CLASI in Wilmington (1995—1997), and other legal aid programs in Beckley WV (1990-1995) and Minneapolis MN (1987-90). He also worked for the Federal Public Defender Association in Philadelphia in the Capital Habeas Unit (1997-1998).

John received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1986. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1983 where he majored in History.

Megan Williams

Megan Williams is a licensed therapist specializing in trauma and complicated grief. She is the author of Cutting Ties: Healing After MLM, a workbook designed to help individuals with the transition out of the MLM industry. A former MLM rep, Megan uses her personal experience in tandem with her professional training to educate on the psychological tactics used by MLM companies.