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

Bio

Kathleen ‘Kati’ Daffan

Kati Daffan is a former Assistant Director in the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Marketing Practices.  Prior to stepping into this role, she litigated fraud cases in the division and advised former Chairwoman Edith Ramirez on consumer protection matters.  Kati has also worked at a civil rights law firm, at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, and as a law clerk to the Honorable Shira A. Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York. 

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.

Claudia Groß

Claudia is an associate professor at TIAS School for Business & Society in the Netherlands. She previously worked at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, at the department for Organizational Design and Development. Her main interest is on how to design organizations that support ethical behaviour and how to ‘translate’ academic knowledge into better organizational practices. Since her PhD on the MLM industry in Germany, she is interested in and concerned about the manifold and widespread unethical practices in the industry. For further information see https://www.ru.nl/english/people/gross-c/.

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. 

Jason Jones

Jason Jones is an attorney and advocate for the victims of manipulation fraud. Jason wrote a popular website that exposed and discussed manipulative online scams, and 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. Jason is currently an Assistant Attorney General at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia where he works on antifraud and workers’ rights cases.

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.

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

Bio

Máire O Sullivan

Lecturing at Munster Technological University in Ireland, Dr. Máire O Sullivan's research is focused on female consumer behaviour. She 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. More information can be found at maireosullivan.com.

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

Bio

Monica Vaca

Monica Vaca is 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, multi-level marketing companies, 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.

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

Bio

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.