Like many other people who get taken by these scams it all started with answering an ad in the paper. I had answered the ad on Tuesday October 12. I spoke to Scott Wilcox on the phone; he told me he was hiring for several positions in his office including RECEPTION!
During the first interview I was put in a small meeting room with 4 other people. We were to fill out a single sheet with our information including our marital status and number of children we had. He then gave a short speech about the company but spoke so fast and gave so little information I was even more confused as to what the company did than I was before I came.
I was asked back for the second interview, when I got there I was put into a larger meeting room with about 25 other people. We sat there for almost 4 hours while Mr. Wilcox than tried to convince us the perfume was "original" packaged for "Wholesale and not retail". After the 4 hour meeting he took us into his office in groups of 3 and asked us a few generic questions such as "Are you motivated about this job? He told us to call back that afternoon and he would let us know if we got the job or not. When I called back that afternoon he told me to be there the next day for the "first day of training".
On the third visit to the office I was with about 13 others. 12 people either were not asked back or did not want to come back. We than sat through nearly 3 more hours of him explaining the "product" to us, he also began to describe how we would get paid. He told us that we had two pay options. Either we could be paid a flat payment of 375/week or we could be paid in overrides. He made the second option seem very profitable to us while explaining it. He took us to his office in groups of 3 once again and asked us witch pay option we would be interested in. A girl in my group hesitated when answering, Mr. Wilcox very forcefully said "Would you like to do the job for more money, or would you like to do it for less money?" She then replied "For more money." He then made some marks on her paper and he told her she could go back to the meeting room.
When he returned to the meeting room he told us that he had been on the phone with Johnny (Mr. Whitworth) and they had decided to run a "Special" contest with us. We were to try to sell as many bottles of perfume as we could to our family and friends and meet back at the office that afternoon to tally the results.
I sold 10 bottles but it was not easy, although I did explain the "renditions" were not the real thing and many people did not want to buy them.
When we returned that afternoon 2 people did not return. We were not down to 11. There was one other person who has sold 10 bottles, another 6, but other than that most had only sold 2 or 3 bottles. He had told us earlier in the day that if we sold 10 bottles he would let us "roll ten dice" and we would then receive a dollar for every dot showing. When he saw how few sales had been made he told us he was disappointed and was going to extend the contest overnight so we could do better.
The next day was a Saturday morning so I reluctantly returned only to receive my "bonus" because at this point I was very skeptical. 2 more people did not return. We were down to 9.
Mr. Wilcox then had us fill out 2 pieces of paper; one was to be sent to his insurance provider for our bond. The other was a contract stating we were independent contractors and not affiliated with Innovative Marketing Solutions in any way, this was very confusing for me, here I was thinking I was hired by this company and I was given this to sign? Mr. Wilcox then explained to us why he recruits people to manage their own offices. He told us that for every bottle of perfume that is sold from each one of our future offices, Johnny would then give him 1 dollar for every bottle sold. Mr. Wilcox told us he was taking us to another office near by to do some training. I rode in the car of another girl, on the way she told me about her doubts about the company witch were the same doubts I was having.
When we got to the office in Arlington (the name of witch I can not remember) we were taken to a meeting room similar to the one at IMS, there were about 15 people in here listening to a speech identical to the one we had heard, told by a person with the same intense nature that Mr. Wilcox had, he also used some of the same expressions and phrases, it was very obvious that they had been trained on exactly what to get us to believe.
We were then paired up with people from this new office. And told to go out and sell for 5 hours.
I was paired with a man who supposedly "new what he was doing"
The girl that I had ridden over with was paired with a similar man. Both being young somewhat scared girls we met in the hallway and tried to decide what to do.
I knew that our backgrounds had not been checked so this mans background had more than likely not been checked either. I was not going to get into his car and not be expected back for 5 hours. We decided to take this situation as our exit cue, We got into her car without saying anything to Mr. Wilcox, we had just signed a piece of paper saying we were our own boss so we didn't think he should be informed. He raced over to the passenger side of the car where I was sitting and opened the door and asked what was going on, I told him I wasn't comfortable with the situation, he told me it was part of the job.
I told him I understood it was part of the job so that was why I decided to just go. He then told me he needs the money back I had gotten for my bonus (I had gotten about 55 dollars from rolling the dice) He said that he "Didn't give bonuses to quitters" I wanted to get out of there at this point so I gave him the money. He then started to raise his voice and asked us if we were going to be "weak pieces of s$%$ now?" I told him not to speak to us that way and he started to yell "I just want to know, are you going to be a weak piece of s%$% now?" I told him again not to talk to us that way and motioned for him to get out of the way. He shut the car door and while walking around the back of the car he hit the trunk and yelled "Have fun being broke!"
I don't know what I can do to stop this from happening to someone else but I hope this will help someone before it starts.
Amber
Arlington, Texas
U.S.A.
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