Primerica Financial Services has become known for offering people “job interviews,” when they are really just having multi-level marketing recruiting meetings.

Here’s one victim’s experience of being asked to show up for a “job interview” that was really a recruiting meeting.

Here’s another victim of the fake job interview technique:

• As I am currently unemployed and eager to enter the workforce, I jumped at the chance to go to an information session about an employment “opportunity” when invited by an old colleague. When I asked her position, she gave me little info about what she actually did, and told me that they would fill me in when I got there.
• I sat in the front row for the presentation, overheads charting interest rates, doubling time, the rule of 72, RVP overriding Financial Analysts, $500 each person you switch from Whole insurance to Term Insurance, RRSPs and Mutual funds, Banks are Evil and Greedy.The whole presentation is pretty much a blur.
• $212.93 will get you trained for the provincial license to sell life insurance.
• Their Mission is to help families become debt free and financially independent, they called themselves “Crusaders”, Sounds great to me, I am an excellent student. Here’s the thing, they want me to provide 5 names of friends and family so that a “Field Trainer” and I can go to their home and get them to take an RRSP loan, pay off their debt, switch their insurance and invest the difference…and then provide some more names to my field trainer.

And on a related note, it seems that Primerica is now encouraging its new recruits to use a scam of a “character reference” to try to get new victims to recruiting meetings. One guy was duped into giving a “reference” for his friend and was immediately invited to show up for a sample session that would demonstrate whether his friend had the skills to be hired. He had this to say about it:

After hours of deliberation and self-hatred and drinking, I realized the cold, hard truth: I realized that I was never really a “character reference”…I was a potential networking client.

I realized that I was a patsy from the get-go.  Or my friend was.  One or the other.  I realized that during that initial call, I could have lied and rambled on for hours about my buddy’s multiple rape-convictions and his hilarious peyote-habit and his utter disdain for those state-mandated lithium injections.  And you know what?  There’s a 99% chance that the lady would have still said said that I had been a “great help” and that she was “now confident in his abilities” and “oh yeah…by the way, would you be willing to sit through an ‘example presentation’ to give us feedback on blah blah blah?”

The terrible and brilliant deceptiveness of the scam was becoming apparent.  Primerica preyed upon my willingness—my obligation, really—to help a friend in need, and they turned that into a money-making opportunity for themselves.

I had been duped.  Big time.  And I was infuriated.

What a sad, sad way to try to recruit new marks!