

Critique of Herbalife as a Pyramid Scheme - TheBiv
http://factsaboutherbalife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Who-wants-to-be-a-Millionaire.pdf

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jimrandomh
At first, I thought this was just exposing the Herbalife multi-level marketing
scam. This has been around for decades, and I remember reading about it years
ago. The premise is that "distributors" are tricked into thinking they can get
rich by reselling weight-loss and other supplements, and paid for recruiting
others. But there's actually no market to be found, so they just get stuck
paying a bunch for some unsellable inventory. The presentation argues that
this is violating laws.

But then I checked out the root web page of the domain,
<http://factsaboutherbalife.com>, I found a far more interesting story. A
popup there says, among other things, that:

> Pershing Square currently maintains a substantial short position in the
> common stock of Herbalife Ltd. (“Herbalife”).

So Pershing Square Capital Management, LP found a large company built on
fraud, shorted its stock, then set up a web page and presentation to encourage
prosecution. Now _that's_ more interesting!

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veidr
That is actually pretty interesting.

However, that info is also in the linked PDF, on page 2:

 _"Pershing Square currently has a short position in Herbalife Ltd.
('Herbalife') common stock. We do not own any options on Herbalife common
stock.

Pershing Square will profit if the trading price of Herbalife common stock
declines and will lose money if the trading price of common stock of Herbalife
increases."_

