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had participated in the last two of those efforts. Each time the
activity was terminated after 2 years. Mr. Landrum says he
stopped the activity the first time because he was in the
military and left the area of his Amway activity. He mentions
that the birth of petitioners’ first child had something to do
with terminating Amway the second time. Nevertheless,
petitioners’ own testimony establishes that they never made any
significant amount from three previous Amway efforts. They tried
different approaches. In the first effort, Mr. Landrum sold some
product but did not enlist “downline” distributors. The second
effort, in 1977-1979 was, according to Mr. Landrum, “just kind of
a break-even deal.” During the third effort, in 1985-1987,
petitioners built up their downline distributorship to include
more than 50 people, but as Mr. Landrum explained, “they weren’t
doing a lot of product”, and consequently, once again there was
no profit.
The obvious question is why after three strikes petitioners
did not call themselves out of Amway permanently. They have
provided no satisfactory answer. Instead, they explain that in
1995 they were introduced to Amway again. Mrs. Landrum testified
that they were “personal friends” with people that were doing
Amway successfully, so they thought they also could succeed.
These “personal friends” were upline seven or eight steps from
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