Skapegoat: The FHTM Blame Game Story

By Joseph Isaacs

This compelling, true and personal, story is about a successful semi-retired 30+ year entrepreneur that turned whistle-blower after getting involved with an illegal Ponzi style MLM called Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FHTM) in 2009. Top FHTM leaders and its founder Paul Orberson tried to destroy his life after he developed a FREE Facebook style tool-set for the industry. Subsequent to FHTM receiving their 2nd cease and desist from Montana, he filed a complaint with the Kentucky BBB explaining their fraudulent ways, in an effort to get reimbursement for unwanted inventory. Shortly thereafter they make him the global scapegoat for everything bad happening to FHTM.

Mr. Isaacs is hit with a frivolous lawsuit claiming trademark violation for marks they never owned. The “fortune mark” is owned by Time, Inc. and FHTM was under an order to stop using it themselves. This was a foolish attempt to gag him and stifle his "Freedom of Speech" rights to prevent FHTM from being further branded as an "Illegal Pyramid Scheme". The stress of the harassing litigation caused multiple life-threatening heart attacks. Mr. Isaacs almost died in 2011 from the heart issues caused by FHTM. This story will keep you mesmerized by the deceit, sexual harassment, lies, judicial manipulation, influence peddling and the drama that unfolds over the next couple of years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Isaacs
• Release date: Apr 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781467570749

Joseph Isaacs

This compelling, true and personal, story is about a successful semi-retired 30+ year entrepreneur that turned whistle-blower after getting involved with an MLM called Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FHTM) back in 2009. Top FHTM leaders, and its founder Paul Orberson, tried to destroy his life, after he created a FREE Facebook style tool-set for the network marketing industry. Subsequent to FHTM receiving their 2nd cease and desist from the Montana AG office, he filed a complaint with the Kentucky BBB explaining their fraudulent and deceitful ways, in an effort to get reimbursement for unwanted inventory. Shortly thereafter the "blame game" begins, when he was made the global scapegoat for everything bad happening to FHTM, as Mr. Isaacs is hit with a frivolous and libelous Federal lawsuit claiming a trademark violation for marks (IP) they never owned. This was a foolish attempt to gag him and stifle his rights to "Freedom of Speech" to save them self from being branded as an "Illegal Pyramid Scheme". The stress of the harassing litigation caused multiple life-threatening heart attacks. Mr. Isaacs almost died in 2011. This story will keep you mesmerized by the deceit, sexual harassment, lies, judicial manipulation, influence peddling and the drama that unfolds over the next couple of years.

Book preview

Introduction

Life before FHTM

I was born in Brooklyn, New York and came from a very proud, modest, Jewish, yet very middle class family with exceptional values and close family ties. At the age of six, in 1962, my parents moved me to the up and coming suburbs of Long Island to the newly developed town of Deer Park. Those were the glory days. Pre Vietnam War – everyone felt so safe at home we never even bothered locking our houses or cars.

My dad used to leave the keys in the car sitting in the driveway without ever being concerned it would be stolen. How things sure change.

My dad was a VP of Sales for General Electric. I must have gotten some of that DNA.

My mom was a housewife in the 1960’s, like most women of her generation, they didn’t work.

They stayed home and took care of the kids, cooked, cleaned and maintained the household while the man was out being the bread winner. This was definitely before women’s liberation. Our house in Deer Park was nothing huge – a typical middle class colonial style home with three bedrooms and a huge backyard, which eventually had an above ground pool for summer fun.

My dad paid about $18,000 for that house in 1962. I think his mortgage payment was around eighty dollars monthly. Of course, that was a ton of money for a middle class family of six. My grandfather had helped provide the down payment.

My mother’s dad was a small businessman and ran a hobby store in nearby Levittown. My father’s dad worked for the postal service. None of us were born with a silver spoon but as I grew to my teenage years I had a desire to learn about business and what made things work.

I learned at a young age about hard work, perseverance and being self-employed. I was driven and determined to be successful. I wanted more than my parents could give us at that time.

By the age of twelve I was moving lawns for my neighbors for $10.00 a month. Today when I look back I don’t understand how I managed to do so many lawns with a push mower. My grandfather helped me manually sharpen the blades every time he would visit from Brooklyn. My grandparents lived in the Coney Island part of Brooklyn. We didn’t have money for a gas powered one like the kids have today.

At the time my curfew was the street lights and my mom didn’t call my cell phone, she yelled out the window, Time to come in for dinner. Most of my time was spent playing outside with friends, not online playing video games, like today’s generation. If I didn’t eat what my mom made for dinner, I didn’t eat that night. I rode a bicycle without a helmet and it was ok. Getting dirty was a part of the daily fun. We drank water from the garden hoses and survived.

Kids, in my day, spent their spare time riding bicycles and playing baseball. We had no video games, computers, cell phones or iPods to distract us and keep us indoors. We were an outdoor generation.

When I got a little older I delivered the local Long Island newspaper- Newsday.

That job had me getting up at 3am and being there to put the different sections of the paper together prior to getting on my bicycle and tossing the papers into neighbor’s yards taught me so much about work ethic. Everything was so easy and different for my generation of kids.

I always had to work to earn money for the things I wanted. My grandparents immigrated to America from Eastern Europe to make a better life for their families. It was all about hard work and perseverance.

In high school, I excelled in Math. My teachers thought I had an above average IQ because I could do math equations and complex algebra or trigonometry problems in my head.

As I grew older, my desire to learn more about business grew stronger and I began to explore the inner workings of what it took to run a successful company hoping one day that I would indeed own one of my own. My grandfather ran a business and so did a few of my uncles. They seemed to be more successful than my dad or others that had a normal job.

I was ultra-inquisitive.

I would speak to anyone that could shed some light on what it took to be independently successful back then.

I never dreamed I could or would develop the true entrepreneurial spirit and have the opportunity to be so independently successful. After all, that went against the grain of the times. Back in the 1970’s we were taught to go to school, get an advanced education, get a good lifetime job, get married, buy a house and start a family. My way of thinking was bucking the trend, for sure.

Due to the family crisis of my maternal grandmother dying of cancer, I was forced to drop out of high school in my senior year, in order to help care for her. I never got the opportunity to finish. After her death, I moved to Florida in the mid 70’s, relocating there after visiting some friends of my dad’s on the unspoiled and underdeveloped island of Siesta Key, a small barrier island off the coast of Sarasota on the Florida Gulf side.

It was so beautiful there. The pure white soft sandy beaches were mesmerizing. The women were tantalizing and so beautiful. Slender was in and obese was a rarity.

I had no idea how I was going to support myself, or even what type of job I wanted, until one day when I ran into a lady my dad knew, who was looking for a business partner for her commercial cleaning business. I had this burning desire to be in business for myself, so I jumped on the opportunity to learn more. I wanted my rewards in life to be in direct relationship to my efforts and successes. I was 17 with very little money and I had no idea yet how to start or make a real business work. I was driven, determined and was not a quitter.

I knew I never wanted the conventional 40-40-40 career. Forty hours a week for forty years to retire on forty percent of what wasn’t enough during the working years. I really wanted more for my future family.

I wanted success. I wanted to step out of the stereotype box.

I knew if I put my mind to it I would come up with a way to structure the deal.

A million different ideas swirled through my young head. After meeting and discussing her needs and goals my Dad suggested forming a Florida corporation and we would run the business 50/50. She would handle the work side of the business and all of the employees and I would handle all of the marketing, sales, business management and accounting (getting to finally put my math skills to good use). My new partner, Donna, took a huge leap of faith in my sales abilities. I was on cloud nine. This was my first merger and acquisition. Now all I had to do was live up to the commitments I had promised Donna, my partner.

Soon afterwards I went on a fact finding mission to see what other companies that offered services similar to JD Cleaning (our new company) were charging. I didn’t want to make the company a single source for maid service to residential customers. What I discovered is that there was no one company on Siesta Key that had all of the big contracts for business. This opened the door for me to scoop in and get whatever business I wanted.

After six short months, of long hours and lots of hard work, I had solidified contracts to provide cleaning services to a dozen high rent condo complexes on the island as well as the four top restaurants and the only tennis club. It got to the point where I could command contracts from any new potential client as a result of the extensive business we already had.

If a prospective client didn’t want to pay us our rates I would pass on the business. We were the company being sought out and in demand. With so many smaller daily and weekly rentals on the south end of Siesta Key we were guaranteed lots of revenues for many years to come. We were forced to expand our employee base and began running two shifts of workers.

By the 2nd year (I was 18 now) our success had blossomed into a major enterprise.

My self-confidence was over the top. To reward myself for my hard work and success I went out and purchased a two year old chocolate brown Porsche 944. The niche I created on Siesta Key enabled me to live an above-average and very comfortable lifestyle. I always wondered what people would have thought if they knew I was only 18. My demeanor was that of someone in their mid to late twenties.

This was my first taste at real business and it was quickly a huge success.

I was earning thousands of dollars weekly from my enterprise and I wasn’t even in my twenties yet. No formal schooling, no college education, just drive and unfettered ambition. It is still hard to imagine or explain to others how I turned only five hundred dollars into a hugely successful operation. I was becoming a graduate of the school of hard knocks on my own.

It didn’t take me long to discover that I had a knack for seeing things that others missed. I could look at a business situation and create a better more efficient way of doing things. This talent was definitely a gift along with my ability for sales. I must have inherited the sales talents from my Dad.

With all of my new found success we needed an office and I needed a new place to live. Donna and I disagreed on how that should play out but after a few long afternoon discussions we decided that I should rent a home, that had come available, right on the beach on Siesta Key, from a guy who went by the nickname Guppy. He was an artist who lived in New England eleven months out of the year and had a summer home on a strip of pure white Siesta sand. His house was one of only six homes on a mile stretch of the most beautiful beach in the world. It was a four bedroom home.

Rent was only $400 a month back in 1973.

I found roommates for three of the bedrooms. College students from the Ringling School of Art gladly paid $150/mo. each for a furnished room in a beach house and I lived on the beach for free. It was like I had taken a self-help quick course in real estate. I yearned to know more so the following year I went to Bert Rodgers School of Real Estate and then sat for my Realtor’s exam, which made me a licensed Florida Real Estate Salesperson. I hung my license with a company in town that was owned by another friend of my dad’s.

Life couldn’t get any better as a teenager on my own.

I was living on one of the most sought after beaches in the world, rent free and ran a business that was generating hundreds of thousands a year in revenues and drove an expensive Porsche. My friends called me the Siesta Cleaning King because my office was a table and director’s chair on my private strip of unspoiled beach behind my rental house. The hardest part of doing business there was finding a 200’ extension cord for the telephone. There were no cordless phones at that time. Cellular phones were unheard of.

I had to reel in the phone and cord every day after work. Rotary dial was all we had, not even push button.

I created this success without the use of the internet. It was twenty years before AOL and even Microsoft. I learned quickly about the personal touch and what customer service was all about.

I loved living on the beach, being tan all year round and being in business for myself, not to mention all of the skinny bikini-clad women of all ages. To this day I have never had a conventional 9-5 job. After a while I got to know all of the regular beach goers and was well known as a young successful entrepreneur who drove a Porsche 944 to travel up and down Siesta to check on employees and smooze with clients.

I was a self-taught success. Next, I learned the art of barter.

One of our clients was the local tennis club and resort with a gourmet restaurant. The owner’s son Jeff, who was in his late 20’s, ran the facility as General Manager. We eventually became friends and he helped me with some business ideas and procedures. They set me up a house account enabling me to charge dinners and drinks as well as play free tennis in the morning. I would deduct those charges from my cleaning invoice and they would pay the difference. The best part was driving my Porsche to work and getting in a round of tennis before 9am every other day. It also gave me a venue to entertain other potential clients.

By the early 80’s I had sold the cleaning enterprise for a profit and wanted to move onto something more rewarding mentally. I did a stint in California as a consultant in the mid 80’s which resulted in me obtaining my Series 3 Commodity broker license on a bet. I was having dinner one night in a bar/restaurant and got to talking to a few brokers whom had worked, at the time, for the commodity trading company Monex.

They said, There would be no way a young guy with no experience could out sell seasoned brokers.

These guys were making up to 100K monthly and I wanted a piece of that huge income. Their lifestyle dwarfed anything I had up until then.

I replied with, If you make the bet worth my while, I will prove you wrong in less than six months. I was confident my sales talents were much better. I wanted a chance to prove myself.

The VP of sales agreed to give me the pink slip and keys to his Ferrari if I could become the number one broker within six months. I know that in the back of his mind there was no way this cocky kid was going to take away his Ferrari.

One thing led to another and they convinced the personnel managers to hire me. After getting my Series 3 license I went to work selling commodities. I specialized in precious metals, currencies and oil. Within three months, of actively selling, I was the number one broker out of 150 others. I maintained that spot for another four months and then said I had proven myself enough to quit. I was running a book of business worth 30 Million after starting with nothing. I built the customer base on my own.

What really upset the rest of the team is that while I took away the #1 seat from a 20+ year seasoned broker, my clients were actually making a profit.

Nobody expected me to be as good as I was or that I could possibly be such a quick learner. I never expected to earn between $20-50K monthly for almost a year. We bought beachfront real estate in Newport Beach, California. And to think it was just to prove a point.

I got his Ferrari when I won the bet.

No bad for a guy who was only thirty. My wife and I bought a condo in Newport Beach and enjoyed life. Our first son, Jeff was born there the following year. Our cheesecake business developed out of that environment.

Over the next dozen or so years I enhanced and built on my business foundations, skills and principles learned operating that cleaning enterprise. I had been asked to get involved in other enterprises and older people starting asking me for all kinds of business advice. I loved to share with others how I build my successes. I helped build a multi-million dollar dessert business for my first wife in the late 80’s and also ran a successful construction company during the same decade. It didn’t seem to matter what industry I was involved with.

My personal challenge was making something successful that I knew nothing about. I loved doing research and honing my skillsets.

It was both rewarding and fun to create one of the top businesses in its respective field that I had no prior knowledge of.

The construction business was sold in 1989 and closed on the very morning of the day my second son, Jason was born. The timing was so weird. The closing was held in the lobby of the hospital.

Business hit a new plateau after I attended a seminar in Chicago one day, a few years later, in the mid 90’s. A friend of mine, from Ft. Myers, had been boasting about his Dad who made millions as a consultant. I wanted to entertain the idea of exploring this avenue. It was 20 years since I had bought into the cleaning business.

I had been consulting in a sort of way for many years, just not getting paid the big bucks for my business knowledge and expertise yet.

While there, I met a woman that worked for BellSouth Telecommunications in Atlanta. I don’t even remember who introduced us but it turned out to be the most productive meeting of my business career. It sparked the ideas needed to create my consulting practice, which eventually made me a multi-millionaire before forty-five.

After one long dinner conversation I learned about the up and coming telecommunications deregulation and the pending passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. She elaborated on her job description informing me about how the incumbent phone company would soon be forced to share its network with new entrants into the marketplace. She was one of the individuals making six figures a year to negotiate such agreements between the parties.

Everything was so new and nobody really had a grasp on the marketplace and an ever quickly evolving industry. My knowledge of telecommunications was so limited.

This was different that all of my previous businesses. It wasn’t pure sales.

A light went off in my head and I saw an opportunity to capitalize on the upcoming legislation and pending reform that there would be a need for companies to help new entrants navigate the regulatory maze. I was so right. This time around we had, the beginning of the internet and I spent days trying to see if I was the only one with the vision to put such a company in place.

The only potential competitors that I could find were a limited number of law firms including Swidler Berlin in Washington DC who was influential in helping draft the Telecom Act itself. They had hundreds of attorneys and support staff.

My business acumen gave me the insight to put this together but I had no law background to speak of. I wanted to create an end-to-end business solution for these clients. Not just the regulatory portion but everything they needed to get into the phone business.

I didn’t know the ins and outs of dealing with the Public Utilities Commissions, in all fifty states, or the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). I didn’t have the knowledge to draft applications or tariffs. What I did have was the marketing prowess and sales expertise to get the clients in the door.

After many weeks of planning and deliberation I finally figured out the marketplace I wanted to pursue and how I could approach it. This was the birth of ISG-Telecom Consultants in 1996. Once again, I was entering a marketplace and enterprise I knew nothing about. I had done this before with other industries in the past. I was confident I could succeed again.

A lawyer I worked with at Swidler Berlin once told me, You have an ability to see things in business that most people miss.

That didn’t scare me off. It motivated me to dive in deep.

I knew in order to be successful I would have to put a team in place that had clout in the industry and who could lend their legal reputation to my business reputation. I knew I had to put something in place that would make up for me not being an attorney or having any expertise or experience in the field.

I could sell and bring in the clients.

This time I wanted a slightly different approach. I wanted it to be similar to the way Monex got their clients in the 80’s. I wanted the clients to come to me and seek us out instead of me having to search for them.

First I needed to develop a niche marketplace.

I helped shape the entire telecommunications industry as we know it today. The market I created didn’t exist before I came into this business sector. I asked myself a founding question, What type of entity could benefit most from the deregulation and the ability to peer with the incumbent telephone company (ILEC – Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier)?

It became painfully obvious that the answer was anyone affiliated with being an ISP (Internet Service Provider).

ISP’s back in the 90’s didn’t use access servers to move internet traffic and access from customers. They had banks of dial up modems attached to T1 type circuits that they purchased at retail from the phone company (Incumbent Local Exchange Company). What if I could show them a way to reduce their costs by 30-40% and take part of the money they were already spending (as an expense on their balance sheet) and turn it into profits? In other words move large chunks of their expenses to profits.

Would they say yes?

Would they agree to spend upwards of $10K with my firm to get this accomplished?

Would they rather change their business model to that of peer vs. customer?

Would they get better service?

Would they be more profitable?

My opinion was yes to all of the above. Now I was being challenged to see if I was right.

Next I had to find a way to get the legalities of becoming a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) done. This was a tougher challenge. I floated many ideas around other executives I knew in the industry. One guy asked me, Why not hire the law firm that helped write the Telecom Act to do my certifications? It was brilliant.

I contracted with Swidler Berlin to draft all of our petitions and tariffs and play intermediary with the regulators. By doing such all I had to do was once again, just like in the cleaning business, construction business, decorating and food service industries - concentrate on getting clients. In the commodity business I had learned how to get clients to come to you without large expensive advertising budgets.

I began writing articles about the benefits of becoming a CLEC and had them published in trade publications throughout the industry. With the help of some web designers I had a website created. When I look back today, at our first attempt at an internet presence, it was so crude, but efficient at the same time.

We created a questionnaire system which allowed potential clients to fill out an online questionnaire and send it to me via e-mail. This gave us everything we needed to evaluate their opportunity without ever speaking to them. Once we determined that they fit our client profile I was able to call them and seal the deal.

The pieces to the puzzle were coming together.

The concept was brilliant and began proving itself as clients rolled in the doors.

As our business model matured we added other partners and affiliated companies to the mix. Just a few short years later, I was speaking publically at industry trade shows ISPCON and other ISP conventions on the benefits of becoming a CLEC. I was now becoming the leading expert on the process for ISP’s and our business had more clients that we could handle. Clients were coming to us through our website and without the benefit of any real advertising budget or expenditures.

We obtained hundreds of referrals - the ISP industry in the 90’s was very tight knit. These articles launched ISG-Telecom to new heights as multiple national industry publications became intrigued by my insight and analysis of the marketplace. Taking the Plunge was one of the first I authored and was also published the most. It has been read on our website tens of thousands of times over the years and soon became industry reference material.

Revenue Streams Article Summary/Excerpt

Taking the Plunge from ISP to ISP/CLEC

http://www.isg-telecom.com/takethe.htm

ISPs have made substantial leaps forward in becoming Next-Generation telecom companies in the USA. Just as ISP’s are jumping into the telecom business, the local telephone companies are moving into the ISP business. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs) and Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) have aggressively begun pursuing the Internet business as an addition to their existing telephone company services. Local telephone companies currently control most of the lines, which are required to reach end-user Internet customers. They can act not only as the suppliers of lines to ISPs, but by installing remote Internet access equipment in their existing central offices, they are able to provide Internet services.

Becoming a ISP/CLEC can lead to major cost savings as well as many potential new revenue streams for ISPs that are currently paying retail tariff prices on circuits provided by the ILECs and/or CLECs.

Today’s market environment leaves an ISP with only four (4) choices:

1. Become a CLEC

2. Partner with a CLEC

3. Be bought out or merge with another large ISP and/or CLEC

4. Be pushed out of business

ISP/CLECs who control their own destiny will be in a position to take advantage of new service offerings, such as VoIP and the ISP that is already a CLEC is better positioned, under current regulations, to enter into VoIP as just one of many other Telco services available.

We evolved rapidly from the articles I had published. By 1998 we had a 6-9 month waiting list for clients who wished us to undertake their projects. We moved into a 5,000 square foot office with 17 employees and numerous attorneys in house on staff. We had so much business that we had to farm some of the regulatory drafting’s out to other firms in order to get client certifications done in a timely fashion.

As business expanded equipment manufacturers sought us out and we created a Becoming a CLEC program for all of their clients who were buying telecom gear. We were now in bed with companies like Siemens, Nortel, Lucent and Cisco.

Developing Strategic Partnerships with the equipment companies gave us even more clout. Soon billing vendors and other post-certification