AnneMarble said:
I've never seen poisoned Halloween candy, but I have seen kids (both adults and teens) trying to sell magazine subscriptions. And so have many of the people posting here. Many of the posters had similar experiences, with kids saying they were one sale away from earning a free trip. These similarities are a little too coincidental to be unrelated, I'd think.
People selling magazines does not = raving bands of kidnappers abducting adults and forcing them to sell magazine subscriptions.
All it means is that there is door-to-door salesman. That's nothing new.
And some of the 'reports' on these websites are unverifiable statements submitted by anonymous posters to the website. The accuracy is questionable. The news reports are mostly about single offenses commited by lone individuals, not raving gangs who abduct adults off the street and force them to sell magazines.
If you look real hard, you can find news reports about everything from gas pumpers to lawyers murdering, assaulting and raping people. Does that mean there is some kind of epidemic of lawyers and doctors turning to violent crime?
No, it means this world has violent people in it, and a lot of them have a job. Obviously the lower paying jobs are going to have more violent people in them, because there is a reason they "cant find any other job" and it has to do with the kind of person they are. When even McDonalds won't hire you, there is a reason for that and I honestly don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for these people because they put themselves exactly where they are.
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Sane people do not work for free.
Sane people would walk away from non-paying jobs and go down to a Day Labor office.
And the only reason a sane person would not do that is if they thought there was some big payoff they were going to get as part of a scam.
And nobody can go weeks without food in the US unless they are purposely starving themselves, because if you hang by a street corner with a sad face for an hour or two, someone is gonna stop their car and give you 100$. I watch it happen all the time, literally, not to mention the available food programs we have that you can get access to even if you're not homeless.
There are also plenty of real news items about magazine subscription crews, and have been for years. I remember hearing about a fatal van accident that occurred because the so-called adult supervising a crew told one of the kids to drive for a while. The kid had no license. There was a horrid accident with multiple deaths. As far as I remember, the kid got the longest jail term, and the jerks who ran this company go away with a lot. As usual. And there are similar stories out there (scores of fatal van accidents), as well as consumer warnings from real organizations that have a stake in getting the facts right.
I don't doubt there are scam artists.
I don't doubt people get scammed.
What I doubt is the purported 'innocence' of the legal adults who claim they were kidnapped and forced into magazine subscription bondage. Most people would walk away from these so-called kidnappers, even if they claimed the person owed them money? "Who cares," says the rational person, "they have to find me first."
I don't think anyone is saying they are literally kidnaped, and then forced to sell magazine subscriptions. They probably join because they think it's a real job or because they are desperate. No doubt a lot of them are runaways with nowhere to go. Also, if what happened to author Katherine Dunn is any indication, the kids are usually made to work far away from home, making it harder to get away.
Tied up inside a van or held in a hotel without your contact lenses but allowed to make phone calls to home...yeah, some have claimed actual kidnapping, and it just sets off my BS meter.
If someone is going to commit the federal offense of kidnapping someone to make money off them, it's going to be for prostitution, not selling Time magazine subscriptions.
A few instances of scam artist raping someone I can accept as being a reality, because that is typical criminal behavior (most of them probably arent even real magazine salesman, and just used the line to get the door open the same way a robber might pretend to buy goods at a 7-11).
That this is a common practice for door-to-door magazine subscribers, I'm not so willing to believe, because if it was you could be certain the FBI would be all over it.
Also, you can be a legal adult and still get scr*wed. (Just read the rest of the Bewares Board to learn the many ways that's possible.) I know that when I was 18, if someone tossed me into California without money or a ticket home, I would have been in trouble. It's hard to travel thousands of miles back home under those circumstances. Especially if you're under fear of getting arrested if you go to the cops. (The kids who work in these crews are often subject to arrest. After all, they are usually selling without a proper license, and they may be breaking other laws as well.)
You can be a legal adult and still be screwed, but you can't be kidnapped if you're running around town all day with plenty of opportunities to escape.
And it really doesn't matter what State you're in-- you're not in a whole different country, you are in the USA. There are both public and private shelters for people to get food and board at if they need a place to stay. I've stayed in some before. It's really not as scary as you seem to believe. Living on your own and fending for yourself is apart of being an adult.
And why would the police arrest you if you claim you've been kidnapped? Whistleblowing is encouraged by law enforcement-- they aren't going to arrest the guy who unknowingly commited a crime if the person blows the whistle on the whole operation.
Last I knew, over-charging people for Martha Stewart Living is not a jailable offense and kidnapping is.
It sounds like many are run like cults -- although from what I have read, I think the supervisers sound more like abusive pimps. If adults can get lured into a cult that persuades them to give all their money to a religious leader, then why can't young adults be lured into a magazine subscription sales crew?
Some of them may be cults, but I think most of this is just some people pretending they haven't done anything wrong when they get caught as apart of a scam, and looking for a way out.
Playing the "omg the devil made me do it, I'm a victim too!" card is the oldest excuse in the book.
So, I don't think these cases are really kidnaps or even cult slavery. It's just a bunch of very stupid people getting duped by slightly more intelligent, but still pretty dang stupid people.
As with most unskilled laborers, a minority of them are violent criminal-type people; most of them are probably just ignorant college students who think they can make some quick bucks without doing a lot of work.
Scam artists prey upon two types of people:
A) Compassionate people (ie "Please donate to the United Hezbollah Children's Fund!")
B ) Greedy people (ie "Hey dude, I can hook you up with some cheap cable!")
From what I've heard so far (Free Vacations, Plane Tickets, Living in a hotel, Travel, Quick Money), they are preying on greedy people who don't have a whole lot of common sense.
When I was about 17, I had someone send me a random email from my (now non-existent) personal website saying they had seen my picture and wanted to hire me to audition for a leading role in Power Rangers (I'm not making this up. This is true). I knew it was total BS, but I replied anyway just to see how far down the rabbit hole goes, and once I learned the guy was basically trying to solicit me for prostitution, I sent his info to the FBI.
It's not hard to avoid obvious scams if you're not greedy and can look at a situation with a clear head.
soloset said:
And to anybody who says, "I'd just run away," or "That wouldn't work on me", well, all I can say is I'm glad you've never had to face the experience.
No, it really wouldn't work on me because I spent five years of my life as an Infantryman in the US Army, and one year of that was deployed in OIF.
You want to talk about a stressful enviroment where your superiors can get away with being abusive or one where you might be jailed if you try to leave, try being lower-enlisted in the military.
Joe Blow Scam Artist can't compare to an ego-inflated Sgt. who takes out his crappy marriage on everyone beneath him.
In the Army, you don't have a hell of a lot you can do if someone is mis-using their authority over you.
In the civilian world, you can quit and walk away, because you're not legally bound to take their crap.
You can even get a lawyer and suit them too.
I can say with absolute certainty that cult tactics will not work on me, and that my mind is my own. That I've managed to avoid falling for every scam thrown my way, and have never had any kind of debt is proof of that.
Also, being that I was in the military, I have a good idea what kind of people cult tactics do work on, and while some of them may be able to flash college degrees around, they really aren't quite that sharp to begin with. The number one factor they all have in common is being extremely gullible, and I've watched them do a lot of really retarded things (ex. "Go kick that cardboard box and see if there's a bomb in it." or my favorite, "Drive real fast over that razor-sharp C-wire in a John Dear Gator and you can clear it easy.").
Maybe I'm a little insensitive now, but when people do obviously stupid things, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for them.