If It Sounds Too Good To Be True...

It probably is.  Fortune features an affinity ponzi scheme which hit Mormons in Utah (not NuSkin):

Koerber held expensive seminars to teach his system, which he called the "equity mill." The seminars disseminated Koerber's free-market philosophy, and also provided a way to troll for new participants in the program. After spending what could amount to thousands of dollars on the training, seminar attendees could be solicited for investments, used to help identify more undervalued properties, and become finders to bring in yet more capital, Moore says.
To avoid regulatory problems, the investments were structured as open-ended loans with promissory notes, rather than securities or partnership interests. Since they weren't securities, the Franklin Squires partners believed they didn't have to be registered with regulators, with all the disclosure that required -- a view regulators have since rejected. There were no registration statements, no audited financial records, no disclosures of risks. Some investors put up tens of thousands of dollars based on little more than brief conversations with Franklin Squires participants.
Few seemed to mind at the time. As noted, the promissory notes typically generated 5% in interest per month for initial investors (and 3% to 4% for those who bought in later). If investors attracted capital from new participants, they received a fee or a monthly commission, as would those newer investors if they in turn brought in their own recruits.
For Moore the program was a revelation. He was working with guys he trusted as good Mormons who shared his views on self-reliance and limited government. He took the $150,000 he had made selling his condominium in Virginia and invested it in a Franklin Squires fund. He wheedled his reluctant wife into putting up part of her own nest egg, which she had inherited when her first husband, a state trooper, had died in the line of duty.

Later on, Moore says this:

Moore says he still believes that the Franklin Squires partners were good men and that they would have managed to pull through had the government not shut the operation down. "The way a government regulator thinks," he says, "is if something is out of the ordinary, then there must be something wrong with it."
When pressed about the evidence that prosecutors have presented that Franklin Squires was a con, Moore wavers. "I didn't think it was a Ponzi scheme, and I still don't," he says. "But I have to say I guess it could be. They put so much stress on getting those high appraisals for the homes, but I never really talked to anyone about it. Everyone knew there were risks."

He was working on some other get-rich-quick schemes prior to being sentenced for theft.  I don't understand how people get sucked into these things.  A few lessons I've picked up from reading these type stories in the past:

1. If somebody is promising you a better interest return than a life insurance company is, run away fast.

2.  If you have to shell out a couple thousand dollars to learn about this "investment system," it is a con.

3.  If people are playing up the religious or political beliefs you each share, or are claiming to donate a percentage of their profits to some church or charity you support, they are most likely scheming. 

4.  If you get a percentage of the return of investors you bring in (multi-level marketing, aka pyramid scheme [or Mormons Losing Money]), there is a good chance a number of people in the upper portions of the pyramid are going to be interviewed by the FBI, and not in a good way (if there is such a thing).

Really, 5% in interest a month?  Back in 2006, I think I was getting something like 1% a year from the bank.  How would somebody consistently pay 60 times what a bank pays?  What do life insurance companies pay?  7 percent a year, maybe?  The affinity angle is what really pisses me off.  People who wrap themselves in faith and rip off their supposed co-religionists are the lowest of the low.  But it is interesting how they found two friends who had opposite reactions to the same pitch.  I don''t know what it is that makes some folks vulnerable to such enterprises when others aren't, but it is interesting.  The fact that Moore went into a couple of other ripoff ventures tells me that he probably thinks everybody who gets ahead does it at the expense of the people around him.  Friends as marks, is how it seems.