Are pyramid schemes legal?
No. Pyramid schemes or multi-level marketing schemes can be a crime in Maine. It is illegal if you are primarily recruiting new members to the pyramid and the sale of a product or service is secondary. Why are such schemes illegal? Because the great majority of participants in pyramid schemes lose all of their money. If a pyramid requires you to find six new members and those six new members must each find six new members, then after only 12 levels of the pyramid your have exceeded the United States population. Of course, long before you reach that point, the pyramid will have collapsed and all of the people at the bottom (the great majority) will have lost their money. See Maine Attorney General’s Consumer Law Guide, ยง 22.2, Pyramid Schemes Can Be Illegal. See also Top Consumer Scams.
