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For those who don't know -- Boca Raton, Florida is well known in the US as a major center of scams and borderline-scams like MLMs. Utah has a history of being a
by api 2y ago
For those who don't know -- Boca Raton, Florida is well known in the US as a major center of scams and borderline-scams like MLMs. Utah has a history of being a home for this stuff too, as well as a lot of quack supplement companies and self-help nonsense.
Just pointing this out so we don't think this doesn't exist here.
- smcin 2y agoWhy Boca Raton in particular?
- intuitionist 2y agoThere are a lot of wealthy retirees in South Florida who make great marks. Beyond that it’s probably to some extent driven by talent agglomeration effects; if you’re someone who makes their money promoting scammy penny stocks, you might want to learn from other people who promote scammy penny stocks, so if they’re in Boca, you’ll go to Boca. Coincidentally(?) Boca Raton was founded by the Mizner brothers, Addison and Wilson; Wilson Mizner was himself a notorious con man.
- gs17 2y agoYou also might be in the category of "those who don't know". The scammers here are absolutely nothing even remotely comparable to MLMs. Most MLMs are questionable, but AFAIK Herbalife isn't kidnapping people in Canada to keep as sales-slaves in Florida, and MLMs might try to ruin you financially if you attempt to leave, but they usually don't torture you to death. See the case of a Chinese celebrity kidnapped in Thailand and brought to Myanmar, who managed to get rescued largely due to being famous enough: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd606l1407no https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd606l1407no Yes, there likely are things like that which do happen in the US, but it's the exception and not what Boca Raton is built on. The only group holding hundreds of thousands of people against their will to do unpaid labor here is the prison system.